Always You
by Alexandra926
Summary: Mark's back onboard Hermes, but someone's not very happy with him...
1. Chapter 1

"Visual on the MAV," Mark heard Beck say, on the comlink, as he waited. Was there something odd about Beck's voice?

Since he didn't really have anything to do, or think about, at the moment, _other_ than wait for Beck to reach him, and plenty of things that he _didn't_ want to think about, at the moment, he tried to decipher why Beck's voice sounded different than it had, the last time they'd talked.

It had been a year and a half ago. On Sol 6. Beck had stayed in the Hab, while Mark and the others had gone on the EVA to collect samples. The storm had blown in, they'd helped each other to suit up, before heading out to the MAV. One of the last things he could remember seeing, the last time he'd seen any of his crewmate's faces-was Beck, the EVA specialist, helping Johanssen to hurriedly suit up, giving her a smile, his hands holding her helmet out to her, far more gently than they'd done for Mark, or Lewis, or anyone else.

It had stuck with him, he supposed, because in the flurry of activity, Mark had noticed, once again, that Beck had it bad for Johanssen. Everyone had noticed, of course. Beck didn't tend to hold those cards very close to his chest, after all. Commander Lewis had been more-or-less forced to declare that Johanssen was off-limits to _all_ the men on the crew. Before they'd even left Earth.

And how many times had Mark had to listen to Chris drone on and on about her, when it was just the two of them, on the trip to Mars. By the time Hermes was orbiting the red planet, it had gotten pretty fucking old. And he had no doubt whatsoever that as soon as they were back on Earth, Chris was going to try his damndest to break his way out of the friend-zone, and turn his attraction to the pretty SysOp into something real.

Mark honestly had no idea if it would work - how often do guys really make it out of the friend-zone, anyway? But when the Iris probe had suffered a RUD at launch, well… he'd made the decision to try and nudge things Beck's way a little bit, if he could.

Had it worked? He had no idea.

But Beck's voice had sounded a little different. Cool.

And then, there he was. Mark couldn't see his face, against the helmet's bright, reflective coating. He didn't greet him. Not really. Just called out on the com for data on his relative velocity every few seconds, until he managed to get a handful of Hab canvas. The first human he'd seen in a year and a half had closed hands on the wrecked remainder of the MAV. Mark held his breath.

Without comment, he attached a carabiner to Mark, and once latched, he quickly unfastened the straps holding Mark into place on the acceleration couch, and shoved off, his MMU thrusters silent in the vacuum of space.

The sudden motion had Mark's broken ribs grinding in his chest, so he shut off his mic, lest any embarrassing noises reach the ears of his crewmates. Hermes drew closer and closer, as Vogel reeled them in, unseen, and Mark tried to stay calm. And failed, hard.

It was hard. His ribs were killing him. And he was finally-fucking _finally_ -almost back to the relative safety of the Hermes. His vision was blurry from broken blood vessels. And maybe some tears, too, if he were being totally honest. The end result was that by the time they reached Airlock 2, the combination of chest pain, low blood pressure, and high heart rate had left him in a state of semiconsciousness.

"Watney? Are you still with us?" Beck's voice sounded in his ears, sounding tinny and really far away.

"Uh huh," he mumbled. Beck didn't hear him, though.

"Just go limp," he said, floating Mark down the corridor towards Beck's quarters that also served as the ship's sick bay. "Watney? Do you read?"

Mark managed to turn his mic back on, a short while after Beck had secured him on the exam table.

"Been having a pretty boring day," Mark joked, weakly, and then drew in his breath sharply, hissing. "And I think I broke some ribs. Sorry." Beck was silent, as he listened to the com chatter between Vogel and Martinez, as Hermes executed a minor course correction.

Having failed at breaking the ice, apparently, they waited, in what seemed like an interminable awkward silence, for the ship to repressurize.

Where is everyone, he wondered. He wanted out of this EVA suit, he wanted to see some human faces, get some high fives. Something that wasn't a potato, to eat. He watched as Beck prepared medical supplies, somewhat clumsily in his EVA suit. Everything was taking so long, moving so slowly.

"Pressure normal," came Johanssen's voice over the com, finally. Beck started to de-suit, helmet first. It struck Mark again, how odd it was, that Beck was both the last human he'd seen, and now the first. He looked tired and drawn, Mark thought. Like he hadn't been sleeping well. He shucked off the rest of his EVA suit and secured it, before he rounded on Mark and unlatched his helmet.

Beck's nose wrinkled, brow furrowed. He looked kind of horrified, actually.

"What, do I have a head wound or something?" Mark said, voice worried and quiet against the noisy backdrop of the ship. His eyes were wide.

Beck shook his head. Thanks to the microgravity, it wasn't too much of an ordeal to slide the top half of Mark's EVA suit over his head, after Mark pulled his arms into the center, careful to avoid his ribs.

Oh. It was the smell, wasn't it? He hadn't had a proper bath in, well, a long time. Cleaning up with only a limited amount of water, when you didn't even have a clean towel, let alone soap, didn't get you very far, Mark thought, wryly.

Beck passed him a handful of painkillers and a bottle of water with a drinking valve on top, to wash them down, and matter-of-factly sliced the seams of Mark's flight suit with some shears, to remove it. Then, he swung the x-ray machine over to confirm that Mark had, indeed, broken two ribs. It took a while. Mark winced when he saw the fresh bruises, dark and angry, welling up. His skin hadn't been in the best shape to begin with, what with the pressure sores, poor nutrition, and general lack of hygiene. A sustained period of 12Gs during the launch hadn't done him any favors.

It had been a really long sol, Mark thought, sleepily, as Beck continued to work him over, checking his vitals again and taking a blood sample. Mark was starting to drift.

No, he corrected himself. Mission Day 687. No more sols. Fuck Mars, and the horse it rode in on. But why was Beck not talking to him? That was kind of strange. He closed his eyes, exhausted. All the jittery adrenaline from earlier events had faded away, taking his energy with it.

* * *

Beck had finished with the examination, and commenced with taping up Mark's ribs. By the time he was finished, the painkillers had kicked in, apparently, and Mark had fallen asleep, less than two hours after they'd pulled him aboard.

He continued, methodically cleaning each of the pressure wounds and covering them with waterproof bandaging. Mark slept on, not even wincing at the touch of antiseptic on open skin. Beck noted the size and placement of the antenna scar on his abdomen for the charts, and checked it for adhesions. It had been a clumsy job, but Mark had managed to pull the edges of the wound together, with only a small amount of adhesion and scar tissue. He was lucky it hadn't killed him.

Finally, satisfied that he had done all that he could do, for the meantime, he scooped Mark up, and settled him onto his own bunk, recoiling again, a little, at the smell of him. He secured a telemetry strap around Mark's middle, to monitor him as well as hold him in place until the centripetal gravity resumed, and then covered him with one of the navy blue, NASA-issue blankets.

He had hastily secured Mark's EVA suit, and his own, earlier, so that they wouldn't be floating around and getting in his way while he worked. But now, they needed to be returned to Airlock 2.

And frankly, it wouldn't be a terrible idea, Beck thought, if he went ahead and locked Mark's helmet into place, to help contain that stench a little bit. He reached for it, when something fell out, floating into his hands.

A little souvenir, from Mars? He examined it a little more closely, and then, recognizing it suddenly, he turned it over in his hands, and looked back at Mark, suspiciously.


	2. Chapter 2

**Mission Day 688**

He woke up, groaning, as his ribs protested the .4 gravity, as well as the lack of painkillers. His vision was still blurry, he noted, opening his eyes, but it had improved enough that he could make out the words, scrawled in Beck's handwriting, on the small whiteboard next to the door.

 **In the lab. Take meds. Shower. Eat. Bed rest.**

On Hermes, the crewmembers usually wore a headset during their work hours, which were, more-or-less, the same hours that they were awake. He grinned to see his old headset, for the first time since he'd boarded the MDV, hanging out there on the exam table, next to the aforementioned meds, and a bottle of water. The table also held his personal hygiene kit and a change of clothes. Clean clothes. Oh, man. _His_ clothes. He picked up his long-lost University of Chicago sweatshirt, maroon and white, with its phoenix insignia, looking at it in wonder. It felt and smelled… wonderful, somehow. He suspected that he, on the other hand, did not.

Mark shook his head, grinning.

A quick shower just wouldn't do. Not this time. Usually, showers were limited to five minutes, or five gallons of water per crew member, whichever came first. But it was already mid-morning, nobody was going to care, and well, he had some serious scrubbing to do, here. Beck had apparently bandaged up the worst of his wounds; he must have passed out yesterday, because he didn't even remember that. He'd been riding a wave of adrenaline since before the MAV launch; since Sol 6, if he really stopped to consider. He still felt tired and worn down, right to his bones. A day or two of bed rest sounded pretty alright.

When the water slowed to a trickle, Mark stopped it, reset the cycle, and turned it right back on again. Shampooing his hair was challenging, seeing as he had to raise his arms over his shoulders to accomplish it, which really hurt like a son of a bitch. It took the full ten minutes before the water exiting through the pressure valve in the bottom of the shower finally ran clear.

He toweled off and changed into fresh clothes for the first time in… way too long. It felt indescribably good. Padding down the hall, he absentmindedly opened the door to his own bunk, and stood there, stunned, as the hot, dry air wafted around him. It was sweltering in there. Like a dry sauna. Also, someone had removed his bed, and shoved a bunch of supply containers in there, instead. What the hell? He retreated back to Beck's bunkroom and retrieved his headset, slipping it on.

Ready for some company, he thought, holding down the button to broadcast his voice across the entire ship.

"Gooood morning, Hermes! Did you miss me?" his voice boomed.

"Watney! You're up!" Martinez chimed in first, followed by greetings from Vogel and Lewis. "Taking my smoke break, Commander," he announced. "I'll be outside if you need me." Mark grinned.

"Take Watney something to eat, while you're at it," Lewis suggested, with a hint of a smile in her voice. Mark agreed with her sentiment, wholeheartedly.

"Thanks, guys."

"Watney?" Lewis added, "Montrose from Media Relations sent you a bunch of requests. Check your email, okay? So Johanssen can get your replies out on the next link-up."

"Aye aye, cap'n," he replied, in a singsong voice, happy to have people around to goof off for. Mark grinned, as he retrieved his tablet and started logging in.

Holy. Fuck. He had a lot of email.

He knew that NASA screened most of the email and only forwarded him the important ones, here on Hermes, but just among the white-listed addresses, there were several hundred. Everything he'd missed, since the day that Pathfinder had been permanently fried, back on Sol 193, over a year ago.

Start with the oldest ones and work forward from there? Or start with the most recent and work my way back, he pondered.

Deciding that the most recent ones that Commander Lewis had mentioned were probably time-sensitive, he opened the first of six messages from Annie Montrose, Director of Media Relations. It seemed like forever ago, that he'd worked with Annie on media relations for Ares3. But it was part of his job description, and something that he could potentially do, while on bed-rest, so he might as well dig in. Besides, he reasoned, it would help him to keep his mind off of… certain things.

The first one was a request for a quick, 100-word message from Mark Watney and Ares 3, thanking everyone involved in the rescue. (Watch your language, Mark! Refer to attached list for recommended shout-outs! ~AM) The next two were requests for pictures and video of him, reading a prepared statement, helpfully prepared by Annie Montrose herself. It included several turns-of-phrase that Mark wouldn't utter in public in a million fucking years. Yea. He'd need to do a little creative editing, there.

Excerpts from his personal logs, while he was on Mars? To share with the media? Urgh. He'd have to think about that. Surely there were one or two that he could stand being made public. He didn't much feel like re-reading through any of them, right now, though. That could wait, he decided, arbitrarily, moving on to the last one.

It was a Q & A session, for some news org that was broadcasting, had he read that correctly? a _nightly_ primetime show entitled The Watney Report? What in the living fuck? How had he not heard about this before now? They had included a list of ten questions for him to use as writing prompts, mostly softballs, like, "What are you looking forward to the most, when you get back to Earth?" and "Describe your typical daily schedule on Mars."

The hardest one they'd dared to include (Montrose had marked it 'Optional') was "What do you have to say to the opponents of your rescue, who have objected to the amount of resources devoted to rescuing one man?"

Mark had furrowed his brow, thinking about that one, for a minute, as the door opened, and Rick poked his head in.

"Room service!" he called.

"Wrong room!" he joked back, "I didn't order any… what's that? Nevermind, you can leave that right here," he grinned.

"Spaghetti and a-meatball," Rick announced, ripping off the corner of the meal pack and pouring it into a bowl for him. Steam wafted up from it, and even though it was just some two year-old, over-processed MRE, one step above field rations, for crying out loud, it looked and smelled like the best thing Mark had eaten in years. The rich smell of tomatoes and garlic was almost overwhelming, as his stomach growled in anticipation.

"Thanks, man," he said, as he dug in. "What the hell is wrong with my room, by the way? It's got to be over 40 degrees in there."

"Tell me about it," Rick groaned. "Mine is the same way. It's a problem with the coolant tubing. It's clogged, or something, but it's locked into the hull. Not going to be able to fix it without doing a 2-man EVA. So I guess once you're all better, you and Beck will get to tackle that. In the meantime, I'm sharing with Vogel, and you get to share with Beck." Martinez gestured to the rolled up bed that Beck had apparently slept on last night.

Mark wished that he'd wound up sharing with Martinez, instead. He supposed Commander Lewis had arranged it that way in case Mark needed medical attention after the MAV launch, which had turned out to be a good call.

But it sure beat Mars, so hey. Whatever, he thought.

"It sure is good to see you," he said, instead, as he took a sip of water. His ribs were beginning to protest from sitting up, so he laid back against the hull of the ship, instead, reclining.

"You too, bro." Rick grinned. "Dr. Shields, she gave us some protocols to follow with you, by the way."

"Huh? Seriously? Like what?" Mark laughed, curious at what the Ares 3 headshrink had told them. Apparently there was an official NASA list of What Not To Do when dealing with your back-from-the-dead crewmate. It struck Mark as funny, but on a deeper level, he knew that there could be some issues, in that department. Maybe some of them had survivor's guilt. He suspected that Commander Lewis did.

"Oh, you know," Rick grinned, "That we shouldn't crowd you, especially at first. How we need to give you time to 'reintegrate with the crew dynamic' or some such thing."

"Guess that makes sense," Mark grinned. "Seriously, though, if you're crowding me, I'll let you know."

"Either way, I'd better get back to work," he said, getting up.

"Well, tell whoever's not too busy to come hang out with me," Mark grinned at him. "How else am I going to dynamically reintegrate?"

* * *

Mark was just finishing his media relations work, when there was a soft knock on the door. It was Johanssen.

She didn't say anything, at first. But she came and perched next to him, on the bunk. Mark offered her a one-armed hug, and she leaned into it surprisingly hard. His ribcage protested, though, after just a few moments of it.

"Sorry," she mumbled, moving away to sit on the exam table, instead. She glanced at the door. "You were already asleep last night, after…" she trailed off, and looked away. "It's good to have you back," she said, finally. Her eyes met his.

"It's good to be back."


	3. Chapter 3

**Mission Day 692**

He had a laundry list of scans to do, data to collect. In many ways, the crew of the Hermes were the stars of their own most important scientific study, and Beck's primary job was to gather the data for it. Every week, each crew member was expected to report to him for a full workup.

Given that he had to work within their already crowded schedules, it generally took most of a mission day to get all five of them accounted for. It had been a busy week for him, since they'd gotten Watney back on board.

Watney, of course, had added considerably to Beck's already full workload. He didn't even know what to think about him, anymore. He'd considered him a good friend. Before.

Not anymore. Now, he could barely look at the guy. And of course, Commander Lewis, in her infinite wisdom, had assigned Watney to share _his_ room, which also doubled as his workspace. And when he wasn't sharing a room with the guy, he spent half his working hours looking at protocols that NASA had sent about him, compiling data about him, sending back reports concerning him; Watney was, by far, the most interesting person on the ship, these days, as far as they were concerned.

And of course, the rest of planet Earth felt the same way. Watney was the big hero; everyone couldn't wait to hear how _he_ was doing. The crew that had selflessly given up a year of their lives to go back and fetch his sorry ass from Mars, well… they were just a footnote in the epic tale of how awesome a guy Watney was.

It was hard not to get a little resentful of it all, especially when you considered that all of Watney's heroic deeds were grounded in self-preservation. And judging by Watney's choice of souvenirs; well, it was becoming more apparent by the day that despite what he'd thought at the time, he and Mark were not "bros".

Speak of the devil.

"Hey, man," Watney greeted him, "You've got me for the next scheduling block."

"Have a seat," he gestured to the exam table.

"I already dropped my urine sample off in your lab," he added. "Shirt off?"

He nodded.

"First thing we need is your resting blood pressure," he said, adjusting the cuff on Watney's bony upper arm.

"Pissing in the sample container," he grinned, "it was just like old times. These days it feels weird to be using a toilet."

Old times. Oh, did you spend a year and a half on Mars? I had totally forgotten, thought Beck, rolling his eyes.

He noted Mark's blood pressure in the chart, and moved on to the thyroid exam. He attempted to palpate the butterfly-shaped gland in Mark's neck. The perchlorate levels in Mars soil were considered a possible thyroid risk, known to prevent proper absorption of iodine. And of course, as everyone in the world was well-aware, nobody had spent more time up close and personal with the red dust of Mars than the man in front of him.

Therefore, NASA was interested to see whether, over the long-term, the vitamin supplements they'd sent along in such great supply had produced the desired results. It appeared, so far, that they had. Mark's thyroid wasn't shrunken or enlarged, and his thyroid output seemed normal.

Nobody, least of all Beck, would have been surprised to see Mark show up with a messed up thyroid, but once again, it appeared that he'd dodged a bullet. Always seemed to have lady luck on his side, that one.

* * *

From: Dr. Irene Shields, Flight Psychologist, Ares 3

To: Col. Melissa Lewis, Mission Commander, Ares 3

Date: June 6, 2037, 16:45

Subject: Re: Crew reintegration

Naturally, these aspects of Mission Specialist Watney's reintegration would be overseen by the ship's doctor, ordinarily. But as you say, if the personality conflict is originating with Dr. Beck, it might not be prudent to include him in this communication at this time. Should the problem continue to escalate, however, Mission Director Henderson should be apprised.

Detail any thoughts you have on how the problem originated in your reply; in the meantime, please refer to protocol 192-7-119.E, and considering clearing the schedule for a couple of hours of team bonding time.

Shields

From: Col. Melissa Lewis, Mission Commander, Ares 3

To: Dr. Irene Shields, Flight Psychologist, Ares 3.

Date: June 7, 2037, 17:35

Subject: Personality conflict

I noted, in the weeks following the Taiyang Shen rendezvous, that Dr. Beck seemed unhappy, following an initial positive reaction to the success of the mission. He began limiting his interaction with certain crew members (Martinez, and in particular, Johanssen) and spending his free hours working on several unpublished human performance studies.

While the other crew members were eager for updates on Watney's progress, especially during the dust storm event, I noted that Dr. Beck seemed disinterested, and perhaps, a bit scornful of the reactions of the other crew members, when it became clear that Watney had managed to avoid the worst of the storm. At the time I attributed this to stress, and was hopeful that I was misinterpreting his reaction.

When Watney reached the MAV at the Ares 4 landing site and regained regular communication, Dr. Beck sent Watney a brief message as mandated, along with the rest of the crew, but never, to my knowledge, sent any further communications to the MAV. Again, I attributed this, at the time, to stress from a full schedule and extended mission time.

Having already detailed the events since Watney's return, those are the previous events as best as I remember them.

I have blocked out two hours for the crew to enjoy a movie together this evening in the Rec, and will update you on any developments.

Lewis

"What is this, a Welcome Home, Watney party?" Martinez said, as he sampled some of the popcorn.

"Is good idea," replied Vogel. "We have had such full schedule with only five crew. I have barely seen any films in a long time. Or my fellow crew for that matter!"

"What movie is it?" asked Watney. "Oh my god. _Popcorn_!" He mock-wrestled the bowl away from Martinez and pretended to hoard it, wrapping his arms around it protectively.

Lewis noted that everyone was laughing at Mark's antics except for the decidedly grouchy-looking Beck.

"It's 'Zhek'," she said. "I haven't read the book. I've heard it was good, though."

"It took for _ever_ to download the file," added Johanssen. "The first seven segments came along pretty quickly, but the rest seemed like it took years."

"Better start the movie, Commander," joked Watney, "Unless you want this to turn into a slumber party. I think it's past my bedtime."

Watney did look kind of tired, Lewis thought, as she queued up the movie.

"Aw… poor Mark," said Martinez, with a smirk. "He's so tired from laying around watching us do his work. Come here, do you need a hug? I know it's been rough."

Watney flipped Martinez the bird, and flopped down next to him. Martinez patted his shoulder, sympathetically. "C'mon Johanssen, you can share my popcorn," he smirked, patting the empty seat next to him.

Lewis watched, from the corner of her eye, as Beck's eyes narrowed a bit. Johanssen obliged, and Mark slumped against her, dramatically, pretending to be asleep.

"Watney!" Beth chuckled, "You are such a clown." Mark snored like a chainsaw, in Beth's ear, his head on her shoulder.

"You missed me, though…" Watney grinned, "Admit it."

"Oh yes, _ever_ so much." Johanssen's voice was dry and humorless. Lewis noted, however, that she didn't move away, when Watney sat upright again.

The movie started, with the main character in a junkyard, in a sort of dream sequence.

"Looks like the Hab did, after the airlock breach," quipped Watney. "Shit was everywhere!"

Beck was on his feet, then.

He leaned in close to her.

"Sorry, Commander," he whispered. "I think I'm going to turn in early tonight. It's been a long week." He looked apologetic, but didn't offer her any opportunity to suggest that he stay, as he turned and quietly left the Rec.

* * *

He'd really enjoyed the movie, he thought, as the credits rolled, and Lewis began to power-down the screen they'd been watching it on.

He bid his crew goodnight and headed for his bunk, thinking again about how nice it was to be able to enjoy a recent movie with his crew. It felt good. His ribcage hurt, from the careful position he'd maintained during the movie. He didn't want to admit how much he'd enjoyed having Beth sitting so close to him, her warmth practically radiating into his side.

Probably the touch-starvation talking, he told himself, as he quietly opened the door to the bunk room he shared with Beck.

His bunkmate seemed to be asleep, on his makeshift futon on the floor. Mark knew that he wasn't, really, though. Because despite his earlier joking around with Beth, Mark didn't snore.

Beck did, though.


	4. Chapter 4

This is probably going to be something awkward, thought Beck, as he followed Commander Lewis to her quarters for some sort of meeting that had been, apparently, deemed too sensitive to take place in any of the ship's public areas. He'd first noticed this oddly-labeled time block show up on his schedule a few days ago, and he'd been wondering what it was all about, ever since.

Fervently hoping against hope that it wasn't something to do with Watney, he seated himself on the room's only chair, a small, bolted-down, backless affair, as Lewis sat on her bunk, across from him, consulting, apparently, an email or something on her tablet. She pinched her chin, and took a deep breath.

"It seems like there's a conflict, between you and Watney," she began, "And it's affecting crew morale. It's time to put a stop to it."

She allowed him a minute to gather his thoughts. Which was good, because really, he'd had no idea that anyone had noticed that anything was off. Had he been that transparent?

He'd tried to be civil to the man, after all. He worked with him, every day. Acted as the guy's doctor, delivering his best standard of care. He'd shared his quarters with him, for fuck's sake, without complaint. Wasn't that enough?

Apparently not. No effort is ever enough, for that one, of course. Had Watney gone whining to Lewis that he wasn't being friendly with him, any more? Typical. Is it illegal to just deeply dislike someone, he wondered.

"I don't believe I've said anything to Watney, that could be considered," he trailed off, trying to choose his words carefully, "derogatory."

"No, that's not what I'm saying. You haven't said much of _anything_ to Watney since we got him back onboard three weeks ago," she looked at him, frowning, "and your personal demeanor towards him has been unfriendly at best, and intimidating and bullying, at worst."

"Bullying!" he broke out, surprised. "Is that what he told you? Because that's ridiculous, frankly."

"Watney hasn't said one word about it," she replied evenly. "Other crew members have, though. And I've personally observed your interactions with him. Or the lack thereof. And it just doesn't add up. You two never had any issues before."

Beck was silent for a moment. Good god, was he going to have to tell her what had happened? It was none of her business. But maybe… maybe she would understand. She wasn't going to like it, though.

"I need to know what happened, Beck. Do you resent the added mission time? Did you have a change of heart about going back for him? I find it hard to believe that you somehow managed to engage in any sort of direct conflict with Watney when you were hardly even in contact with him for most of the time he was stranded."

"It's not the added mission time," he admitted, slowly.

"What, then?" she prodded.

"It's just," he hedged, "kind of awkward to talk about." One of her eyebrows went up, her eyes widening.

"Well," she soldiered on, it's kind of awkward," she said, making air quotes at him, "to work with you two, when you can't get along. And I know the problem isn't with Watney. He tries. I've seen him. He doesn't have any more idea why you've pushed him away than I do."

"It was the email he sent me," he finally admitted, after a long silence. "After the Iris probe failed, and we all thought he was probably done for."

"Dr. Shields had him send everyone a letter. Yes, I remember." She looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"Right. So the message that he chose... to impart on me," Beck's voice had turned bitter, and emotional, as he trailed off.

"He was rude? Blunt about something?" Lewis leveled a look at him. "The man was stranded on Mars and thought he was going to die. Is it possible that you've overreacted, here?"

"Not that. It was," he paused, looking uncomfortable, "something personal. He gave me some advice."

She smiled at that, unwillingly, and just as quickly resumed her professional demeanor.

"What advice did he give you?"

"Well, suffice it to say, I shouldn't have listened." He looked at his hands, knowing he was about to make Lewis very angry. "He set me up. Told me that I should tell Beth how I felt about her."

Lewis blinked, slowly.

" _Watney_ told you," she paused, to take a calming breath, "that you should… confess your love. To a fellow crewmate. In the middle of an Ares mission. In space. After you had been expressly ordered, _by your Commander_ , not to do so. Am I hearing this correctly?"

Beck sighed. He nodded.

"It's kind of hard to ignore the advice of your long-lost colleague that comes back from the grave, and tells you that he's had lots of time to consider these matters." He frowned. "But you were right, Commander. I wish I had listened."

"Johanssen wasn't interested, was she." Lewis didn't even make it sound like a question. Had she known all along, then, that his feelings for Beth had been one-sided? He looked at her, curiously, one eyebrow raised.

"Did you know that? Back before Missed Orbit training, when you took me aside and told me…"

"I told you and Watney both," she reminded him. "And I had good reason!" She looked at him, incredulously. "I commanded a submarine, Beck. For years. You're hardly the first person under my command to have an unrequited crush on a crewmate. I didn't want to be forced into removing you from the crew at the last minute like that, though. That decision would have had its own, probably more severe, repercussions on morale." She looked at him, quizzically. "You put me in a hell of a spot. What was I supposed to do? I split the difference and took you and Watney aside and warned you both off of Johanssen."

"Both of us," repeated Beck, thinking out loud. "I thought you were speaking directly to me, under the guise of including all the single men." He looked at her. "But you weren't." He sighed. "Watney was just better at hiding it than I was." He looked at his hands again, miserably.

Lewis didn't respond right away. The expression on her face had softened a little, though.

"Wasn't he." Beck's voice was the one with no implied question, this time.

* * *

Johanssen looked at Martinez, questioningly.

"You're switching rooms with Mark?"

Rick nodded, grinning, with a shrug. He continued to load his personal effects into a storage container.

"Lewis said to. I guess the two of them aren't getting along so well." He chuckled. "No surprise, there."

Beth's eyes were wide. Why would Lewis have… Oh god. She really didn't like to consider the reasons why, actually. Oh, shit. What the hell had those two idiots gone and done, now?

She'd been teetering on the edge; hovering just on the brink, for days, now.

Suddenly, she snapped.

"Where's Watney," she hissed, grabbing for a tablet to look at his schedule.


	5. Chapter 5

"What were you thinking, writing all that to Beck!" Beth stared at him. "He went and made a fool of himself!"

"Oh, god. I'm sorry," Mark managed, defensively. "That must have been awkward." She'd burst into the lab with a face like a stormcloud. Shocked, momentarily, by the way she flew at him, as though she wanted to _hit_ him, he had instinctively taken a step backwards.

"Yes! It fucking well was!" She glared at him. "It was like kicking a puppy! To tell him that I was not, and have never been, and never _will_ be interested in him that way." She shook her head angrily at him, her hair tossing behind her in distracting .4g waves.

"Oh, shit," he said, shaking his head. "I am so sorry. I really did think there was something there with you two."

"Apparently!" she said, sourly. "And don't go thinking that it got any less awkward, afterwards! We still have to work together! Martinez never stops teasing me about it! I still have another seven months of it! It's never-ending!"

"So basically you've been sitting around, pissed off about this, for the last year or so?" Mark gave her a half-smirk, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"More or less." Her mouth had curved into a reluctant smile.

"Shit, Johanssen, I feel terrible, now. I really thought I was helping you two out."

Beth was silent for a while.

"You know what the worst part is?" she asked him, finally.

No, but I'm sure you're about to tell me, he thought. He shook his head.

"I can't help but feel a certain amount of respect for the guy. For being brave enough to take his shot."

"That's the worst part? That you wound up respecting him?" He looked at her incredulously.

Too late, he tried to duck as Beth chucked him on the side of the head.

"No, you idiot." The look of pure frustration on her face made him grin; he couldn't help it. Not helping, he thought. He forced his face into a semblance of neutrality.

He waited for her to continue, and when she didn't, he finally asked, "So what _was_ the worst part?"

She didn't answer him right away. She looked like she was being pulled in two different directions. He put a hand on her shoulder, when he noticed that her eyes were welling up.

"The worst part is that _I_ wasn't. I haven't been. Brave enough." She looked down, seemingly unable to meet his eyes. "But I'm done with that. Life is too short for that shit!" she burst out.

She leaned forward, and kissed him, full on the mouth, then.

"It was always you." She retreated a few inches, looking him in the eyes. "It was you that I wanted." The tears won their battle.

Mark was stunned. Taken completely aback. He'd never even dared to dream that Beth felt the same way that he did, that he'd somehow missed it. Overlooked it. God, was it possible? Was he dreaming?

Tentatively, he stroked one side of her face, brushing back a stray lock of hair. Her eyes were locked on his, looking happier by the moment. His arms went around her, then. Holding her like two bands of steel. He never wanted to let go.

"It was always you. I mean, for me, too," he stumbled over the words, murmuring into her hair. "I just never thought there was any chance. I just wanted you to be happy."

"That's why you told him to go for it?"

Mark nodded, ruefully. "I'm sorry." He kissed the top of her head, and told her quietly, "Not my brightest idea."

He kissed her, long and lingering.

Some indeterminate amount of time passed; if you'd told him later that it had been hours. or days, he'd have believed it.

Eventually, reality caught back up to them; they were astronauts and they were on the clock. Work to do. And really, did they want to advertise to the rest of the crew, that Something Was Going On? A million miles of nope.

Finally Beth whispered to him, "Tonight." She gave him a meaningful look, as she pulled away from his embrace.

Her eyes were wide; pupils dilated, cheeks flushed. Five seconds earlier she'd been wrapped around him in a manner not fit for polite company, kissing each other to near insensibility. It took a moment to sink in.

Did she mean…? Yep. She gave him a last smile over her shoulder, blushing, on her way towards the door.

* * *

Everything seemed to divide itself into "before", and "after", Mark noticed.

Before, he'd been so used to living with the burden of being in love with someone he could never have.

The knowledge, the near certainty, that someday, Beth would find someone, maybe their mutual friend, and then he'd have to watch her finding happiness with someone else.

He'd put up with years of people wondering why he didn't date, why he didn't have anyone. Countless suggestions, offers of introduction to someone nice. But as long as they continued to be someone that was not Beth, he was not interested, plain and simple.

His own _mother_ had hinted that it was okay if the person he loved was not a woman; she'd be okay with it. As long as he was happy.

At first, he'd patiently explained; he was an astronaut candidate. Life for an AssCan was simply too busy to pursue anything. And he'd be in space for a year; no need to get involved with someone, only to be separated from them, millions of miles away. The truth was that he'd be right alongside the object of his affection for the whole trip. Eventually he got tired of making excuses.

Let them think what they want. Fuck it.

And then, as it had turned out, he'd been separated from the woman he loved, after all. Beth, reaching her hands out towards him hopelessly, as the com dish had slammed into him, carrying him away, was the last glimpse he'd had of her; of any of them. It had stayed with him.

Before. He'd trudged back to the Hab, knowing that he was stranded, not sure if there was any way for him to survive the night; let alone the four years until Ares 4 returned to Mars. But he hadn't given up.

He'd come close.

After the airlock breached.

The Hab's contents, strewn across the red landscape. It was what he had later called his Martian Yard Sale - everything must go!

A half-dozen EVAs later, he was still finding things. His toothbrush had finally been located near the solar farm, half-buried in sand.

Lightweight items had been thrown the furthest in the near-vacuum. But it still surprised him, a few weeks later, after a dust storm, when he'd stepped on something light grey, looking for all the world like a patch of snow under his boot.

Someone's shirt, he'd thought. He picked it up and shook it out, clumsily. Beth's hoodie. Her favorite NASA uniform item. She'd been wearing it right before the mission scrub. Mark remembered her wearing it on Hermes pretty often, as well.

He'd brought it back inside the Hab and cleaned it up for her, folding it neatly at the foot of her bunk. Or what was left of it, anyway. Explosive decompression hadn't done any favors to the furniture.

And there it had laid, untouched, until that afternoon nearly a year later, when he'd been packing up the rovers to head to Schiaparelli. He hadn't brought any personal items of his own on the surface mission, but somehow, it felt wrong to leave Beth's hoodie behind. And yet, it seemed really creepy and weird of him to make a big show of bringing it back to her.

So he'd compromised by finding the hoodie a job. Waste not, want not, he'd thought, as he folded it up to use it as a cushion for the MAV launch. It had probably saved him from a serious concussion.

* * *

And now, it was After. How was this even going to _work_ , for Christ's sake?

Tonight, she'd said.

He was sharing a bunkroom with Beck. And up until today, Mark had really had no idea why Beck had been so unfriendly with him, but now he had a pretty good idea. He'd guessed. Or Beth had told him already. God, how awkward.

Lewis had already notified him to gather his things and move them, temporarily, to Vogel's room, just until they were able to repair the coolant tubing in the hull. But she hadn't really said why. Mark had read between the lines and attributed it to Beck being weird, preferring his privacy, whatever.

But now… what now?


	6. Chapter 6

He was standing outside her room. He was supposed to be in Vogel's room, not here. Mark had never been in the military, but that was almost a rarity among his fellow astronauts, and he knew very well that insubordination was a big deal. And here he was. Standing outside her room.

Trying not to think about that rigid, calculated chain of command. It was the very backbone of life on a ship like _Hermes._ You did what the mission schedule told you to do. Every minute was planned out. You colored between the lines. Two hundred people were sitting around on Earth, deciding when it would be an opportune moment for Mark Watney to scratch his nose, and his job was to oblige them.

Sure, NASA wanted people who are cool under pressure, problem solvers. But unless the shit had recently hit the fan, they wanted those same people to toe the line. Stick to the script. Follow the rules.

And then there had been that confrontation, earlier, in the lab. Holding Beth, kissing her. He'd expected to feel conflicted about doing something so flagrantly in violation of the rules. Not just any old inappropriate relationship with a coworker, no. _This_ was something that his Commander had directly ordered him to never do.

But it hadn't bothered him at all. Something deep-seated within him had already looked at the facts and he hadn't even needed to make the decision, because it was already made. He was standing outside her door.

He tapped on it, quietly.

* * *

Beth had sort of sleepwalked through the rest of her mission day, having a hard time processing what she'd just done.

Had she seriously just jumped all over Watney and called him an idiot? And for the first time in her life, she'd made the first move on a man-on a coworker!-when he'd never given her any real reason to think he was even interested in the first place. What the hell had gotten into her?

 _it had worked though, he'd totally been into it!_ She smiled, at that; she couldn't help it.

And then she had invited him… oh my God, she thought. How long had it been, anyway? Years, since she's had sex with anyone other than herself.

Mark's older, too, she reminded herself, a little anxiously. Probably way more experienced than she is. He's so outgoing and friendly, she's watched women throw themselves at him for years. That killer quick smile, the irreverent sense of humor. No doubt he's had more than his share.

Not since he left Earth, of course, though. She didn't know where she'd gotten the nerve to openly proposition the guy like this.

Oh my god, she thought.

She was a bundle of nerves, lying there in the dark, waiting. Maybe he'd changed his mind. Decided that it was a bad idea.

What if someone had _seen_ him?

Stop borrowing trouble, she told herself.

Instead she tried to relax and think back to that euphoric moment, earlier.

 _Always you,_ he'd said. Hard to argue with _that._ He wanted her; she wanted him. It was as simple as that, and as complicated, too.

A tap on the door. Her heart thudded in her chest, as she jerked upright, reflexively, and slid the pocket door open as quietly as she could.

He was standing there, holding a rolled-up towel. She herded him quickly inside, and then they stood awkwardly, shoulder to shoulder in the cramped space. They stood there for a minute, silently.

Finally, it registered that he was holding something out to her. Like it was a gift.

It was the blue, NASA-issue towel, still quite warm from his hands. How long had he been standing out there, anyway? She took it, and sat down on her bunk, unable to meet his eyes.

"Yeah," he said, finally, looking sheepish. "I guess it's kind of weird. But it reminded me of you, and…" he trailed off. What was he even _talking_ about? He was blushing again.

Finally she managed to say, giggling a little, "This towel reminds you of me?" It was so random and weird. She wasn't sure if there was a joke and she had missed it, or if Mark was just being strange. He looked down.

"Oh. No." Looking flustered, he turned it over and unrolled it. There was something light grey inside.

No way. Her mouth fell open, in shock.

Her hoodie.

The one she'd left behind, during the surface mission.

She didn't know what to say. Out of all the things to bring back from Mars, he'd brought back something of _hers_? Her eyes filled with tears. Again.

Stroking it with her fingertips, she finally asked, "How?" fighting back a sniffle. Hoping that she wasn't sounding way too emotional over a sweatshirt.

"Funny, huh?" Mark had his eyes closed, perched next to her on the bunk. "I never thought I'd see mine again, either," he chuckled, pointing at his own University of Chicago pullover. "But I found it outside, actually, a while after the airlock blew. Right after I sent that stupid email."

Beth turned it over in her hands, not sure what to say.

"I took it back into the Hab for you. It was kind of like, a little reminder of you. Like I wasn't alone, not really. And then, I didn't like to leave it there, when I left for Schiaparelli, so I brought it along." He smiled at her, ruefully. "I used it as a cushion in my helmet for the launch."

She smiled at that. Something about the mental image of her long-lost hoodie playing its own small role, helping Mark to come back to her. That she'd helped him, even if it was just a little thing.

"I missed it," she admitted, finally. "It was my second favorite thing that I left on Mars." She smiled up at him, as he looked confused for a moment. Then he'd smiled.

"I don't even get a 'thank you'?" he asked, with a mock-offended expression.

"Thank you," she replied, dryly. She rolled her eyes at him. "Ever so much." She looked up at him, through her lashes, with a sexy smirk.

"Thank me with a kiss," he suggested, grinning down at her.

So she did.

* * *

He didn't think he had ever kissed anyone while he was laughing, before. She was laughing, too. It was oddly intimate, as kisses went. But this had already been a day of many firsts, why not add a few more to the pile?

Now they were alone. In her darkened bunk, with just the soft light from the auxiliary lighting lending a backlit glow to the small room, and he wasn't sure what to do, next.

Yea, she'd invited him here. And it was plenty obvious why. But still, he had a vague feeling that Beth ought to be the one to make the first move, tonight. Let her set the pace, he thought.

It was harder than he'd thought.

Much easier said than done.

How do you keep yourself in check, he thought, when the woman you've been dreaming about for years, suddenly, literally, falls into your arms?

She had pulled him alongside of her, in the bunk, until he was half-way laying on top of her, kissing his way along her collarbone, enjoying the way it made her squirm against him.

And then, then _her_ hands had started exploring, in retaliation, and it had almost been his undoing.

The feeling of her fingertips, shyly brushing along his waist, sneaking underneath his shirt, oh my God, he thought. The touch-starvation almost made him lose his resolve, it felt so good to have her hands on him. He bit back a moan and redoubled his own efforts, nibbling on her earlobe, whispering softly to her.

"You're driving me crazy," he breathed, as she shivered.

She responded by snaking her arms around him and pulling him against her, full-length. She tugged upwards on the hem of his shirt, and when he reluctantly pulled away for a moment to take it off, she returned the favor by taking off her sleep top, as well. Both of them, bare from the waist up.

When she pulled him back towards her, they came together skin-to-skin, and again, his resolve crumbled and he nearly lost control again. She was so warm, her skin silky-soft and smooth against his hands.

* * *

Beth didn't know if it was the low gravity, if she'd simply been short-changed by her previous partners, or if Mark was some sort of sex phenom, but there was no denying that _that_ had been the absolute best sex of her life.

She felt an odd combination of breathless and boneless as she laid against him in the narrow bunk, still panting a little, his hands idly skimming up and down her side. Evidently, he liked the feel of her.

He pressed a kiss against her temple, and she could almost hear the wheels turning as he looked for an appropriate comment.

"Well, _that_ was out of this wor-" she thumped him on the head.

"You did not even just make a space joke right now," she said, primly, fighting back the giggles.

"Sorry, don't know what got into me, there. That was a bad joke. So bad. I must still be seeing stars from that-" she'd thumped him again, laughing at his antics.

Playing for the crowd now, he replied, with a straight face, "I'm sorry, I must have failed to realize the gravity of the situation-" she cut him off with a kiss this time, as they both laughed.

"You're such a clown, Watney."

"Yep. Regular space cadet," he looked at her, grinning, obviously wondering if she was going to try to hit him again. Before she'd decided, one way or the other, he preemptively took her hand, lacing his fingers through it, bringing it to his mouth for a kiss.

She didn't think she had ever held hands with someone, after sex, she thought, as she drifted towards sleep, her head cradled on his shoulder. It had never occurred to her, before.


	7. Chapter 7

Beth's alarm clock was noisy, Mark noticed, still half-asleep.

Beth Johanssen's alarm clock.

Getting louder and louder by the second.

Wait.

Panic. Mark was now, instantly, completely awake as he tried to think how to manage this situation, as he shut off the alarm. Why hadn't he set an alarm for himself? _Idiot_ , he told himself. He sat up, carefully dislodging a still-sleeping- _and naked,_ he couldn't help but quickly appreciate the view-Beth.

He shook one bare shoulder gently.

"Hey. Time to get up. I wasn't supposed to stay in here."

"S'okay," she mumbled, eyes still shut. "I don't care."

Um.

"No, I mean… Beth, people are going to be looking for me, I shouldn't _be_ here."

Beth shrugged, and sat up, rubbing her eyes. She was surprisingly calm, while Mark was busily freaking the fuck out.

He put his clothes on, and was finished around the time she was getting started, languidly rifling through a drawer under the bunk for fresh clothes.

"You okay?" he asked her, trying to decipher her reaction, which seemed decidedly strange.

She nodded, matter-of-factly.

"M'fine. Just need some coffee." She lost her battle with a yawn, rubbing her eyes again.

"So, uh… how are we going to play this?" he asked her, trying to come up with a workable plan. Maybe if Beth left first, could he follow later, claim that he'd fallen asleep in the lab? What would Lewis-

"Play what?" asked Beth, meeting his eyes, curious.

"Um, _this_? You? Me? In here? Together? When we shouldn't be?"

"Oh. I told you already. Don't care. Fuck it, I don't care what anyone thinks about it."

Was she serious?

Mark thought about that for a few stressful, heart-pounding moments, before the tension began to fade out. She made a good point. Maybe that _was_ the better way to go.

"You really don't care? If everyone knows?"

She shook her head again.

"Zero fucks. What are they going to do? Fire us?" She was serene and calm, as she managed to neatly set aside years of NASA indoctrination.

Mark couldn't help staring, and he also couldn't help but admire her nerve.

"Okay, then," he said, drawing out the syllables, looking at her like he couldn't quite believe she was serious. "We just stroll on over to the Rec, get some breakfast?"

"Yep." She smirked at him. "Also, don't bother moving your stuff over to Vogel's, if you'd rather sleep in here."

She laughed at the sudden expression on his face.

"I'm not proposing lifetime commitment, Watney. Just saying it would probably be more convenient; people are going to think what they're going to think. Feel free to be my roommate if you want."

He shook his head slowly, smiling in spite of himself, eyebrows raised, and finally he threw up his hands and shrugged.

"Okay. Sure. Yes to both. Lead the way," he gestured to the door.

"Wait. Hand me that, would you?"

She shrugged into her hoodie, pulling it up around her face, smiling up at him.

Opening the door without so much as a sideways glance, she turned and headed towards the Rec in search of coffee, Mark trailing in her wake.

* * *

Surely he was imagining things, thought Chris. It was just a coincidence that they'd walked in together, right? That they'd disregarded the normal seating arrangement and sat alongside one another instead of across.

The way they kept _looking_ at each other. Almost as if…

Nope. He wasn't imagining it.

She was wearing that shirt, the one Watney had had stuffed into his EVA helmet. She had a _glow._

It probably shouldn't have come as any surprise. But the realization hit him like a ton of bricks, anyway. She'd made her choice, now that she finally had the one she'd wanted all along. He'd never had a chance.

Dropping his unfinished breakfast into the recycler, he turned on his heel and headed for the lab.

* * *

"I can't work this way! I can't work with either of them." Beck paced back and forth. "How am I supposed to…" he trailed off, overcome.

Commander Lewis looked at Beck, reaching deep within herself to tamp down her irritation with the entire situation and find some sympathy. Playing referee for crew drama was not her favorite way to block her afternoon schedule, when there were far more important things to deal with.

 _Children,_ she thought. _I'm the space mom for a minivan full of bickering space children._

"I can't even _look_ at the two of them." Beck looked pained.

" _Yesterday_ ," she reminded him, "you said you'd be fine, if only I would assign Watney to another bunk," retorted Lewis.

"You said he could bunk with _Vogel!_ "

"Yes. Well," she replied, carefully. "They're consenting adults, and they worked out an alternate arrangement on their own."

"You're not seriously going to allow that to fly."

"Indeed, I am." Lewis looked at him with one eyebrow raised, daring him to challenge her authority.

She wasn't disappointed.

"That's completely absurd," he fired back. "I plan on advising Dr. Shields about it in my next report. NASA isn't going to allow a sanctioned, inappropriate-"

 _Really?_ she thought. _You're going to tattle? Do I have to threaten to turn this space car around?_

"Dr. Shields suggested it, in the first place," she replied, cutting him off. "The mission is already pretty far off-script, anyway. As long as it doesn't interfere with their duties, I'm not going to say anything." She looked at him, evenly. "And neither are you."

He was silent, for a moment, while he absorbed this new information, looking ever more resentful.

"Think of it this way," she said, "If Johanssen had said 'yes' to _you_ , instead, you'd have done the exact same thing. In a heartbeat. And Watney wouldn't have ever said a word about it."

Beck was silent for a long time. It was difficult to reconcile his current opinion of Watney with someone who would accept defeat and fade quietly into the background.

And yet, even as he tried not to, unbidden, he remembered all the times he'd talked about her with Watney, on the way to Mars. Considering the possibilities; him and Beth together. Mark had never said a word; never let on for one second. Backstabbing son of a bitch.

"The upcoming reactor repair, though Commander. It'll just be me and Watney on an EVA together for ten hours a day, for three days straight."

Lewis looked at him.

"And?"

"It's going to be... " he trailed off. "Can't you assign Vogel to it, instead?" He already knew the answer, but he felt compelled to ask, anyway.

"Watney is the mission specialist, after you, for EVAs, and the ship's engineer. He's the best crewmember for the repair, and we need the best. This is _mission critical_. You'll just have to put your personal feelings aside and do your job."

Beck sighed.

"And before you ask, the schedule has been blocked and signed off on by Mission Control, already. The EVA will take place as scheduled, unless you care to explain to the Mission Director why you feel that you are unable to do so."

 _Henderson would laugh his ass off at you,_ she thought. _And then he'd tell you to cowboy up and do your fucking job._

"Fine." He shrugged. "Forget I said anything."

 _Not likely, Doc._

* * *

"Be careful out there," Beth told him, smiling. There was a certain nervousness about her demeanor though, and he knew her well enough by now to see that she could use some reassurance.

It was Day 6 of After. Would he ever stop counting things, counting days? Sols, mission days, had Mars turned him into an obsessive compulsive?

He'd be out there for ten hours or better today, during Phase One of the repair mission. Several teams at Mission Control had been working out the fine details for the past few weeks.

If it was just a matter of overheated bunkrooms, he doubted that mission control would have even bothered with the repair. But the reactor core output _was_ mission critical, and it was failing, a little more every day.

The extra strain on the system wasn't advisable under the best of circumstances, but with another five months to go before _Hermes_ fell back into orbit around Earth, attempting to fix the problem while traveling at 34,000 kilometers per hour had, scarily enough, become an acceptable risk.

Martinez would be talking them through the first part of the hull superstructure disassembly process, leaving Beth with not much to do, except wait and worry.

Beck, also waiting outside Airlock 3, glanced over at them with an expression similar to how he'd looked when Mark had first removed his helmet after the rescue mission, before he finished suiting up, locking his own helmet into place.

"It'll be fine." He stood there a moment, wanting to give her a hug, but EVA suits are awkward and bulky, and Beck was standing, floating, actually, right there…

This apparently bothered Beth not at all, as she leaned in to kiss the faceplate on his helmet.

"For luck," she said. "I guess that was silly."

Mark couldn't see his face, but he was about 99% certain he heard a barely audible groan issue from Beck's mic.

Probably best not to aggravate the guy _too_ much, he thought.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her.

Instead, he reached out with one gloved hand and tweaked the hood on Beth's shirt. To remind her of all that they'd been through, so far.


	8. Chapter 8

It was unfortunate, Mark thought, for approximately the twentieth time in the last six hours, that JPL had managed to produce EVA suits that had areas inaccessible for cleaning, given the available tools on _Hermes._ Bad design, guys, he thought, mentally retracting the beer he'd planned on buying Bruce Ng. Because no matter how many times he'd cleaned it, there was still the lingering smell of sweatsocks in his.

He was bored, as he clung to the outer hull near Nosecone-A, tethered to both Beck and _Hermes_ , as he waited for Beck to finish a lengthy series of checks from the last disassembly stage.

Letting his mind wander as Martinez called out on the com link, back and forth with Beck, and periodically, Mission Control, he went over his mental list of incomplete tasks that _weren't_ getting done, while he spent his day working with the biggest asshole in a million mile radius. What fun.

Montrose was expecting the first series of entries from his logs on Mars, had been expecting it for days, in fact. He'd cleaned up and was nearly done editing a reasonably decent version of the first ten sols. There was a list of requested blurbs for an interview, to be intercut with some of the video logs. An overdue email to his parents.

He felt kind of weird, not having told them already what was going on in his personal life. He knew perfectly well that the fact that their wayward astronaut son was performing a dangerous, mission critical spacewalk today would pale in comparison to the news that he had acquired a girlfriend, he thought, rolling his eyes.

He didn't like the notion that someone at Mission Control would probably read it before they did, though. Still, he thought, he'd probably better address it sooner rather than later.

He and Beth were hardly a secret, on _Hermes_ , after all. It was only a matter of time before word filtered down to Houston, if it hadn't already. And his family should know, before they heard it on CNN, right?

How is that email supposed to start, anyway? He grinned at the thought.

 _Dear Mom,_

 _Guess what?_

"Watney."

Mark glanced up.

"Earth to Watney," said Beck, voice dripping with sarcasm. "If you're not too busy?"

* * *

Beth Johanssen was, suffice it to say, very tired of listening to the com link. In another hour, it would be time for Beck to return to the airlock. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow they would begin work on the reactor output, the most dangerous leg of the process. And as the ship's Reactor Tech, she would be calling the procedure, as Martinez had done, today. And today had been challenging enough.

Occasionally there would be an incoming message or command sequence from Mission Control, and she did her job, without comment. Routing data and following the diagnostics chain, she clicked on her com link to acknowledge acquisition of signal, as she listened to Beck make one cutting remark to Watney after another.

Not much doubt that his behavior had been noted by the ground team, but what could they do? Fire him?

It was a virtual certainty that there was no chance any of them would be selected for another Ares mission, anyway. Or any mission at all, really. They'd all exceeded their lifetime max for radiation, for one thing, with the slingshot maneuver that _Hermes_ executed on the trip back to Mars.

And then, there was the small matter of mutiny. Sure, NASA had rallied behind them and swept the matter under the rug. But they surely couldn't expect it to be overlooked when the next selection process got underway.

* * *

Mark slid the door open to Beth's bunk. He'd been up late, trying to catch up on his backlogged duties. For the lowest ranked member of the crew, he sure wore a lot of hats, here on _Hermes._ Vogel had covered his lab time today, but the media relations work wasn't going to take care of itself, nor could he pass those duties on to anyone else.

An Ares crewmate could expect to average ten hours of scheduled duties every mission day, plus two hours of exercising. When you added in sleep and mealtimes, there wasn't much downtime, under ideal circumstances.

On a day like today, things could grind into the wee hours of the morning. It was half past two, as he crept in, as quietly as he could, hoping not to wake Beth.

He sat down, gingerly, on end of the narrow bunk, to finish undressing.

Beth stirred, and shifted closer to the hull wall, to make room for him.

He slid in behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist, until his nose was in her hair. She sighed and snuggled back into him, sleepily.

The spot she had so recently vacated was wonderfully warm, and the sudden rush of comfort she offered struck him hard, as it always seemed to. Sensory deprivation did funny things to a guy, and this felt like good medicine.

It was the first time that he could remember, though, he thought, smiling, that he was happy to have someone to come home to, after a long and particularly frustrating day at work.

Mark was reminded of something that Rick had said when he was waxing poetic about missing his wife, Marissa.

 _A good woman to share things with, that's what you want, man. The bad stuff, she shares the load, and it's half as bad. And the good stuff? She shares that, too. And it makes it twice as good._

He'd laughed and said that he personally experienced those same benefits from a cold beer, but now it seemed to make more sense.

It really did make it feel like everything was right with the world.

* * *

Beth found herself in the unusual position of being fully awake _before_ Mark, this morning. She didn't know how late he'd been working, but her memories of scooting over to make room for him were fuzzy and faint enough that it must have been very late.

She'd had a hard time getting to sleep last night;calming herself down enough to stay asleep had proved even more difficult until Mark had finally joined her, with his reassuring presence.

The stress and worry about today's EVA was really getting to her, she thought.

They'd had years of training, sure. But it was different when it was your own life on the line, and not a computer simulation. The last couple of weeks, they'd seemingly gone over every possible outcome, but it wasn't realistic to think that everything would automatically fall into place, that nothing unexpected would pop up.

Speaking of which…

Well, if nothing else, at least it gave her some interesting ideas on how to wake Mark up, she thought, with a devious smirk. Might as well get his day off to a good start.

She made her way south, fumbling with his waistband under the blankets, laughing quietly to herself to hear him sigh, still asleep, followed by his suddenly-very-awake intake of breath, as her mouth closed around him.

* * *

The tethered toolbox floated in front of Mark, and an arm's reach away from it, opposite him, Chris worked. Hull Access Panel G-31 was open, between them, a mass of insulated tubing and wiring exposed.

The offending coolant tubing section needed to be identified, before they could disassemble and repair it, and Mark was waiting, patiently, while Mission Control relayed a series of diagnostics that would pinpoint the location of the clog.

Day Two of the repair was dragging by, slowly. His nose itched. With no real way to reach it otherwise, he rubbed his nose against the hamster feeder on one side of his helmet. It made an odd noise, on the com link, though. It sounded rather distinctly as though someone had farted, loudly, into the mic.

Beth giggled a little bit, as she called out the next two diagnostic parameters. Brendan Hutch at Mission Control also chuckled, when his reply reached them a few minutes later.

"Maybe you should have the good doctor check you out, there, Watney," quipped Hutch.

Mark groaned.

"Hey, I was just scratching my nose!" he defended himself, laughing.

"A likely story, man," chimed in Martinez.

When he tried to reconstruct the events from memory, later, he was never quite sure where that wrench had come from. But there it was, floating, tethered there nearby Beck's elbow. Mark reached for it, intending to secure it back to the toolbox, but instead he knocked it further away.

Beck reached for it, and managed only to change its trajectory, brushing it with the tips of his EVA suit gloves.

The spanner was knocked loose, and Mark watched with growing horror as it floated straight towards G-31. He held his breath, as he watched Beck make another mad grasp for it.

It made a direct hit, though, right on the stressed coolant line. The impact was silent, and for an instant Mark thought it was okay, maybe the line hadn't ruptured.

"Shit! That was close! Beck, are you-" and he blinked, because Beck was gone. Along with most of the contents of G-31. What the hell just happened, he thought, heart pounding.

He looked behind him in horror; Beck had been hit by the resulting explosion, carried away in a cloud of vapor and shrapnel.


	9. Chapter 9

Blown back by the explosion, Beck had so far only managed a brief, surprised noise, as the explosion had launched him, probably making it difficult for him to talk for awhile.

Refusing to let panic get the better of him, Mark reminded himself that Beck was on a tether, and thanks to the MAV rescue mission, it was an extra long one, even. He still had a chance.

His suit was intact, Beck's vital signs told him that much. None of the flying shards of metal had compromised his ability to breathe. That was something.

Beck could use his MMU thrusters to slow down, maybe enough that when he reached the end of the tether that it wouldn't pull the connectors out of his suit.

He arrived at that conclusion a few seconds after Beck had, apparently.

"Call out my relative velocity, every ten seconds," Beck called. He was sounding amazingly calm, under the circumstances, Mark thought. But then again, Chris was their mission EVA specialist. He'd done three times as much training and simulations for situations like this as the rest of them.

If anyone could survive this, it would be him.

Johanssen began to call out his speed relative to _Hermes_ , as Beck calculated the amount of propellant remaining in the thrusters, and how much power he could possibly coax out of them.

"Watney, you are go to begin reducing velocity on the tether manually," came Beck's voice, clear and confident.

Mark complied, running the tether through his gloved hands, allowing friction to slow it, gradually. It was something they'd practiced dozens of times. In an underwater simulator at the training facility in Florida, a couple of years ago, now, but still.

In such a situation, it was exactly the correct way to handle the problem. As far as the book was concerned, Mark was doing the right thing.

At the moment of the explosion, though, unbeknownst to Mark or Beck, Hull Panel G-31 had disintegrated into shards of shrapnel; one razor-sharp slender piece of it had taken a trip straight through the tether material.

Beck timed his velocity and hit the thrusters hard, in an attempt to match his speed to that of _Hermes_ before the propellant was exhausted. There

"It's going to be close," Beck reported, with the first hint of worry in his voice.

Commander Lewis' voice, calm and collected, came on the com link, "Anything above about four meters per second runs a risk of the tether connection tearing out of his suit, Watney, and anything past ten virtually guarantees it."

Mark clicked his com link in response.

"I got you, bro," he muttered as he began tapering the friction onto the line, slowly. Beck's life was literally in his hands, the thought came to him unbidden. We need to set things right. There's still so much I need to tell him, he thought.

If they'd known that the tether was compromised, maybe they could have come up with another plan, but they simply didn't know.

The friction had been laid in so gently and evenly that the compromised section actually survived when it reached full tension, a few moments later.

Mark was pleased, giddy even, to see how smoothly and evenly the tether had been slowed. It had gone textbook perfect.

"Two meters per second," reported Beck, relief starting to creep into his voice. "One point five."

"Good work," congratulated Lewis.

"One meter per second. Propellant is now completely spent." Beck was beginning to sound cautiously optimistic.

"Almost got you," Mark murmured, the deep concentration evident in his voice.

Mark's gloves closed, slowly around the tether, slowing it to a stop.

It snapped.

* * *

"Thanks for trying," came Beck's voice, finally. He sounded quiet, and faraway now. Stunned.

"No. There's got to be a way," Mark started, argumentatively.

"I'm traveling slower than _Hermes,"_ replied Beck, patiently. The patronizing tone was gone from his voice. "I've got no tether and no propellant." He absentmindedly reeled in the rest of the snapped tether line, examining the frayed end. "Looks like some flying debris sheared through it," he said, shakily. "It was a good try. Almost worked, even." His voice went quiet for a moment. The other crew members were still in shock, and nobody knew what to say. "I guess this'll be goodbye, then."

"Damn it!" yelled Watney, "Don't you do that. There's no way we're going to stand by and…" he trailed off, overcome.

Beck could still see Watney, tethered to _Hermes,_ holding the line.

"Ideas?" Lewis floated the suggestion, in case someone else could think of something quickly. Beck was right, though. There was nothing to be done.

There was half a minute of silence before Beck finally broke it by saying what nobody wanted to hear.

"It's hopeless," he said. "You've got bigger problems than worrying about me. That reactor output has to be fixed, quickly, or none of the rest of the crew are going to make it home, either."

"Lewis and Martinez are heading to suit up now," reported Vogel.

"G-31 will have to bypassed, now," Beck said, not even wanting to think about how long and dangerous the job was that he'd just signed Lewis and Martinez up for.

"Houston is already starting relay procedure," Vogel replied. "Will be okay."

There was silence for a long time, before Beth came on the com and asked, voice broken and scratchy, "How long do we have?"

"A few hours?" guessed Vogel. "Before he is out of the com range?"

A few moments went by, before Beck spoke up. "You guys with me, 'til then? I guess I… I'd like to say some things, to my family, my sister mostly, and you guys, before I… before it's time You all have been my family since training."

"Of course we are," Beth said, reassuringly. The others murmured their agreement.

"It's been an honor serving with you." Rick said, formally, rejoining the comlink as he waited for the airlock to cycle.

"Likewise, Martinez." Beck said, quietly. "You get these guys the rest of the way safely, okay?"

"Will do." His voice was choked.

"And it's been an honor serving with you, Commander," Beck said, as Lewis rejoined the com, a few moments later.

"It's been a good run, Captain," Lewis used Beck's Air Force rank, respectfully. "I'm sorry this happened. I wish I had…" Her voice was full of regret. Beck knew that she was going to take this hard. This was going to be worse than with Watney.

"Don't blame yourself," he replied quickly. "You couldn't have known. We needed this repair. We still do."

Watney spoke up, finally.

"I'm sorry, Chris. Sorry about everything. I know we haven't talked much lately. And now I regret that, because I should have tried harder to sort things out between us. Made it less awkward, or something, man. I'm sorry."

Chris didn't reply for awhile.

"It's okay, Mark," he said, finally. "Nothing more to say."

"I need to," Mark continued, "because I didn't want you to get hurt. That's the last thing I wanted. I love you like you're my own brother. It kills me to know that I fucked things up between us."

"You didn't." Beck's voice was introspective now, calm and accepting. "I think I just get so fixated on my goals…" he trailed off, and was quiet for a few moments. "Anyway. You were just trying to help. But it was always you that she wanted." He paused, thinking. "I see that now."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, though." Mark repeated. "Wish there was something we could do. I hate this. Losing you this way. Wish I'd known that tether was fucked, maybe we could've-"

"You couldn't have known," Chris cut him off. "You did your job perfectly. Less than one meter per second," he chuckled. "Couldn't have done it any better myself. That tether wasn't going to hold, no matter what you did. You did your best, Mark."

"It wasn't good enough, this time."

"It's okay, Mark. It's not so bad, as a way to go. It won't be painful or anything, I'm just going to-"

"I know. I know," Mark's voice was practically a whisper. "Thanks for coming back for me."

"You make it count, okay? And take good care of her. Promise?" Beck's voice was quiet, now

"You know I'll do my best." Mark promised.

Johanssen's voice came on the com link then, hoarse and teary.

"Beck? I've got your sister patched into a private channel, on your say," she said, sniffling a little. "There's the delay, but.."

"Thanks, Beth." He was done with the formalities, now. "Thank you, for everything."

"Okay, we're going to clear this channel, Beck, so you two can talk, and so that we can start calling procedure for the repair, now." She paused. "I, um... You let us know when you want us back in the channel. We'll be here for you. All the way."

"Alright." His voice had gone throaty and hoarse. "I'm sorry about everything. Wish I hadn't been such an ass."

Beth chuckled, sniffling again.

"Me too," she replied. "I've got Amy here for you. Johanssen out."


	10. Chapter 10

The worst part about going out this way was, he supposed, was that he'd been _so close_ to getting the situation under control. Just centimeters per second. Watney had really almost pulled it off, despite the damaged tether. So close. But not close enough. _Hermes_ slowly drifted ever-further away.

A couple of hours had passed since the explosion, and even though the crew was busy in support of the other EVA-that had to be some kind of record, only Vogel and Johanssen were actually _aboard_ Hermes at the moment-they were still on the open com link, all of them, supporting him.

It was pretty impressive, he thought, how little there really was, when it came right down to it, to deal with before he felt like he was as ready as he'd ever be, to die.

He'd had a will drawn up before he'd left Earth. Not that it was very complex. All his assets would go to his younger sister. He'd talked with her for a good long while, earlier. Said his goodbyes.

That had been difficult. But at least he'd had the chance. A trade-off, to be sure, but he was pretty okay with it, all in all. He had managed to wrap his head around it, he supposed. As much as one could.

Things that had been so important, when he'd woken up this morning; how disappointed he was that Beth had chosen Watney, over him? What a stupid waste of time _that_ had been. It had taken all of _this_ , to finally get it, he thought, glancing around at his surroundings.

And then he saw it. Caught in the folds of his EVA suit, the reflection from it had caught his eye.

Huh. A little souvenir? Sure. Why not, he thought, reaching for it. He turned it over in his glove, when an idea came to him.

A fatally dangerous idea, sure.

But what did he have to lose?

* * *

"Hey, Watney?"

Chris had been quiet for a long while, and at any rate, hadn't addressed him directly in quite some time; Mark was kind of surprised.

"Yeah? You want to talk? Need anything?" He was still well within view, tethered there by Nosecone-A. Technically speaking, Mark's EVA should have been long over, by now. Lewis and Martinez were now working the repair, with Vogel calling the procedural. But Mark had been reluctant to head in, feeling vaguely that as long as Beck could see him, that maybe he wouldn't feel so alone. So he'd stayed.

"Johanssen, can you make a private channel so I can talk with just Watney?"

"What's up?" he asked, after the double click of the channel change had sounded.

"Um," he paused for a moment, with an odd tone of voice. Anxious? Excited? _Happy?_ Mark couldn't quite pinpoint it. "There's something…" he trailed off again, as though he wanted to ask something awkward but wasn't sure how to get started.

"You need something? Anything. Just ask."

"On Sol 6," he started, "When the antenna breached your suit."

Mark's brow furrowed. He didn't think he liked the sound of this.

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember anything from the breach? Did you lose consciousness right away? Would you mind describing it for me?"

Mark paused. He tried to think back.

"Honestly? It all happened so fast. I think, maybe 5 seconds? Before I passed out? I remember my ears popping really hard, and all the breath getting sucked out of my lungs. It hurt. The antenna in my gut, also, I suppose that was a major contributor." He chuckled. Beck laughed, too. "After that, nothing. I woke up the next morning." He tried to remember any other specifics, but that was pretty much what he remembered. "Why?"

Beck had angled his EVA suit camera around to show him something.

Mark stared at it blankly for a while before he realized what it was.

It was a wedge-shaped silvery shard of something.

"Is that…" he paused for a moment, "is that a piece of the ship?"

Chris laughed.

"Yeah. It is."

"And you're thinking about…"

"Uh-huh," Chris laughed again.

Mark grinned.

"How fast do you think you can get going with it?" he asked, already trying to figure whether this plan had any chance of success. Beck's earlier question about consciousness after decompression made more sense now.

There wasn't lots and lots of atmosphere in Beck's suit. If he deliberately breached it, he might only have seconds of consciousness. And not get much speed, anyway. And he wouldn't be in control of his trajectory. Could it possibly be enough?

"Not very fast," Chris guessed. "But maybe, if there were some way to retension the tether line?"

"On it," Mark replied, as he glanced around to see what he had to work with.

* * *

"Johanssen, can you add Lewis to this channel" Beck asked.

"Sure," came the reply.

Click, click.

"Commander, we've got a plan." Mark announced, cheerfully.

"A plan for what?"

"Getting the crew back on the ship. All of us."

"Say again?" Lewis sounded dumbstruck.

"Iron Man, Commander."

"Iron Man." Beck confirmed.

Lewis was silent, thinking for a moment.

"It's a Hail Mary," Beck said, thinking that she didn't want to get the crew's hopes up, and he wanted to make sure that she knew that he and Watney fully understood that the likelihood of failure was high. "But if it works," he trailed off.

"If it works," mused Lewis, with a smile in her voice. "You're go. Keep me posted."

* * *

"I hope I remember how to throw a fastball," Mark laughed.

"What? No softball team on Mars?" Beck quipped.

"Yeah, well, those Martian farm leagues are hard to break into," Mark joked, winding up. He released the spanner, now tied to the knotted end of the tether. It hurtled towards Beck.

"Nice one," he said, when the line was stretched out straight in front of him, a few seconds later.

Now, it was just a matter of getting to it.

Easier said than done.

"Looks like about 80 meters," Mark estimated. "Then I can pull you the rest of the way in."

"Okay. Here goes."

Beck jammed the sliver of G-31 into his glove, and held his breath.

Nothing happened. Sharp as it was, his jagged little shrapnel souvenir couldn't cut through layers of metal and composite.

"Not happening," he replied, glumly.

"Yeah, the gloves are tough," Mark replied, thinking carefully. "How about between the joints?" he suggested, gesturing to a spot on his own glove, where the wrist flexion was located.

"Good idea," he said, sounding a bit stressed. "This is harder than it sounds."

Mark nodded, chuckling.

"NASA would be shitting themselves if they knew we were out here trying to figure out the best way to deliberately breach an EVA suit."

"What, I was just going to tell them, 'but Watney told me to' if I get in trouble." Chris joked.

"Guess I'm getting a little too used to destroying their equipment," Mark laughed.

"Okay," Beck laughed again. He'd missed Mark's goofy sense of humor. "Here goes. Again," he brought the shard up to his left wrist, lined it up at the flex joint and dug it in, as hard as he could.

Nothing. But now he could feel the point of it, on his wrist now, at least. He dug it in, deeper, feeling the point intruding against his skin, feeling the layers give way, one at a time, then he twisted it-

His ears popped, as his suit alarm blared.

Oh god, he thought. Besides the minor fact that he was pretty sure he'd just sliced his wrist open, the feeling of vacuum; his lungs being forcibly collapsed, it was more painful than anything he'd ever experienced.

That car crash he'd been in, in college?

The time he'd taken a tumble down his grandparent's stone basement steps and broken both his ankles?

That time he'd given himself a paper cut to the eye?

Those were nothing. He'd happily take them all, times ten.

But he had work to do. Ignore it, he told himself.

He gritted his teeth, feeling the liquid in his mouth beginning to sublimate. He jerked the shard out of his wrist, in one jagged motion.

And he was moving. Slowly.

His eyelids were locked in the open position now, with no tears to lubricate them, which was surprisingly unpleasant, but at least he could see, somewhat, as he tried to correct his course back towards _Hermes._

The pain kept ratcheting up, and he supposed that Watney was talking to him, but he couldn't hear anything but the rushing sound of atmosphere leaving his suit.

His chest hurt, he noticed, trying to focus on anything to keep himself aware, long enough to get to that spanner.

He'd mentally estimated he might have only ten seconds or so before he lost consciousness, but now he could see that it was easily going to take twice that to get to the tether line and secure it.

His left hand, experiencing the worst of the breach, had gone almost completely unresponsive, as though it weren't even attached to him. The doctor in his head didn't like to consider what damage was being done.

The trajectory looked pretty solid, he thought, hazily. Then he found himself wondering, belatedly, how exactly he planned on securing himself to that tether, one-handed?

His eyesight, already reduced to tunnel-vision from the breach, began to grey-out.

He didn't have much time, now. His nerves were screaming, now. Hot. Cold. Pain. Pressure. Every receptor cell in his body complaining, in unison. It threatened to overload his nervous system, once and for all. Ignore it, he thought. Just a few more seconds.

Had he ever even _practiced_ using the breach kit one-handed?

Of course not. That seemed unforgivably stupid, in hindsight.

* * *

"Looking good," Mark said, knowing that Beck probably couldn't hear him. Lewis had her own mission-critical task to focus on, but she had straddled the com link channels anyway.

Beck's vital signs were not, actually, looking so good, but he was hanging in there.

Mark watched, as Beck slowly, improbably, made his way back from the abyss, closing in on the spanner, one meter at a time. He wondered how long Beck could fight off unconsciousness. Deliberately hyperventilating yourself was the way NASA had taught them to stave off loss-of-consciousness, in training.

And that wasn't going to do Beck a lot of good without air in his lungs.

Unconsciously holding _his_ breath, Mark watched as Beck inched towards the tether. Another ten seconds? Eight? And then he had to secure himself, patch the breach, and _then_ Mark could reel him in.

Was it possible? It didn't seem like it ought to be. But there it was, happening right before his eyes.

Beck grabbed at the spanner, slowly, clumsily, with the one hand.

Oh, shit.

It was a difficult enough task with gloves on. Let alone only one hand. Mark didn't like to think about what he might be facing, even if this plan _did_ get Beck back aboard _Hermes_.

But he managed it. Against all odds. Somehow, he managed to slow-motion twist it around his glove, and then knotted it with the spanner, before reaching towards the breach kit.

"Got him," he reported to Lewis, who clicked her comlink in response.

Mark began reeling him in, watching Beck lurch towards him, with a satisfying jolt in the right direction.

He had to be running on fumes by now, Mark thought, as the breach kit began to make its way, slowly, towards the ruined glove. Mark was hauling the tether line as fast as he could, watching in horror as Beck's vital signs began to ebb.

Beck was a mere hundred meters from _Hermes_ when he flatlined.


	11. Chapter 11

"Watney?" Lewis sounded somewhat hesitant. Afraid of what he might say, when she was unable to affect the situation, either way. She and Martinez were out of the equation.

Airlock 2 was cycling at maximum speed, and Beck was, well, Mark wasn't sure what kind of shape he was in. Nothing good. His heart had stopped and restarted. Stopped again. Blood pressure had been all over the place, as Beck drifted in and out. The breach kit had managed to seal the glove, though Mark wasn't quite sure how Beck had managed to do it, semi-conscious, injured, and one-handed. And people thought that _he_ was stubborn about staying alive.

Mark winced when he saw it, though, a scramble of soft resin and blackened, sublimated blood residue.

"A minute, minute ten," he replied, to the unasked question. How long was the vacuum exposure? He had an odd feeling of deja vu as he floated Beck's suited figure down the corridor towards Beck's quarters, as quickly as he could.

He performed the fastest EVA suit removal that he could remember, and shrugged it aside to unlatch Beck's helmet.

Just as Beck had done that day, Mark drew in a horrified breath. Not because of any smell; it was just rather shocking to be confronted with what a minute of decompression in space would do to a person's skin.

Beck's face and neck were deep pink and looked bruised and blistered. The skin around his eyes and nose had fared even worse. Beth burst into the room then, just as Mark was removing the top half of Beck's EVA suit, and got his first look at the blackened left hand, thick with sublimated blood around the wrist.

"Oh my _god,_ " she whispered, off microphone.

Mark nodded in agreement, as he grabbed the medical scissors to cut Beck's clothes off, revealing more damaged skin.

Can a man really come back from this? Mark wondered.

Beth's eyes were full of tears, as she went for the defibrillator, in the corner cabinet. They'd all drilled on the use of _that_ particular device, at least. Though as he sheared off Beck's flight suit, he wasn't sure how advisable it was to use the paddles on skin that was already compromised like this.

It was the only option they had, though, and they were racing the clock. Beth powered the paddles, as Mark threw the telemetry strap around his crewmate, and cinched it closed, backing away.

 _WHAM._

Beck's body jolted against the restraints.

* * *

He was floating.

 _Hermes_ was, as far as Beck knew, short on warm bathtubs full of water to float around in, but that's what it felt like. It felt good and soothing, whatever they'd done.

The battle they'd fought, to keep him alive, seemed to be over and won. He was really back aboard _Hermes._ Not dead.

He wasn't in pain now, or not much, anyway. But he jumped, a little, as his eyes were suddenly being rinsed with saline. He was able to open them a little, as the saline was gently wiped away. His vision was hazy, but he recognized Watney's silhouette.

This was real, then. He was really waking up, here on _Hermes._ Back where he belonged. With his crew, against all odds.

Watney leaned in and spoke to him, then, but the words were lost. One of his ears seemed to be tuned to the channel of rushing wind, while the other featured only ringing and squealing. Did _none_ of his senses work properly?

He recognized the floaty, warm and snuggly feeling of morphine in his system. That wasn't the source of the giddy feelings, though. He'd really made it back, somehow. His crazy idea had worked.

He raised one hand, with a half-formed notion of gesturing to Mark, to ask him about his condition, and then realized that he wouldn't be feeling like doing much talking anytime soon. The inside of his mouth felt cracked and swollen, like he'd been breathing fire. His hand and arm were completely encased, and there was the bumpy, nubby feeling of rows of fresh stitches at his wrist. The memory of digging that shard of G-31 into his skin came rushing back. Experimentally, he wiggled his fingers and was gratified that they all seemed to work, although the joints felt very stiff and swollen. His other hand had the IV line placed in it. He admired it for a moment. It was nicely placed. He made a mental note to congratulate Mark on his handiwork; his veins could be pretty challenging.

His eyes widened another degree when he took a closer look at it. The IV stood out sharply against his skin, which looked like one solid bruise. All those broken blood vessels. He shook his head. It would look terrible for a few weeks but it would fade out as it reabsorbed.

There was a cannula, and his airway seemed a bit more restricted than usual, but he was breathing okay.

Watney was facing him again, talking to him. And then, with dawning comprehension that he wasn't being understood, he paused for a moment, and mouthed, very slowly and distinctly,

" _IRON._

 _MAN_."

and then he pointed with both hands to Beck, grinning. Without even needing to think about it too much, he knew that Mark meant that he was basically okay. It was just his goofy Watney way of summing it up for him.

Having his friend back, it seemed like an unexpected gift. They were okay again, he and Watney. It felt good. The bonds that held them together as crew, as family; they'd stretched, but they hadn't been broken. Mark had his back after all. He always had.

He managed to smile back, before he drifted back into heavily medicated slumber.

* * *

"We can work in shifts, until the EVA is done," Beth said. "It's all we can do." She looked at Beck, snoring away in his bunk.

"Okay, go get some sleep, then," Mark told her. She looked exhausted. This had been a very exhausting mission day, for both of them. "Wish I could join you," he said, with an eyebrow waggle, and a grin.

She rolled her eyes at him.

"Watney." Vogel's voice came over the com link. "Houston is…" he paused, "They are anxious for you to give them the more information on Dr. Beck's condition."

"Tell them." Mark grinned, "Tell Houston he's stable now."

Beth smiled at that. Stable. Back on _Hermes_. Those two had really done it. She glanced back at them once more, on her way to her bunk, as though she couldn't quite believe it.

"Copy that," Vogel replied.

Let the ground crew have _that_ to think about, he thought, smirking. He could almost hear the committees forming from here.

The crewmate on _Hermes_ in the center of the worst medical emergency in the history of the manned space program, had had to make do with the ship's botanist.

They were probably shitting themselves.

Awesome.


	12. Chapter 12

"What do you miss the most?" Mark asked his fellow crew over dinner one evening. It had been a quiet mission day.

The reactor had been restored to normal output, and for the most part, life on _Hermes_ had returned to normal. They'd all fallen back into the work, the schedule, the reassuring routine.

"Bread." Beck volunteered. "I miss bread. Toast."

"Mmm. Toast sounds awesome," agreed Beth.

"Produce." Lewis argued, shaking her head. "A nice, crisp green salad." She looked down at her foil packet of pasta and soggy vegetables, wrinkling her nose, slightly.

"French fries," teased Martinez, looking at Mark.

Mark glared at him.

"That salad does sound good," he mused, pointedly ignoring Rick, who was now dipping his imaginary french fries in imaginary ketchup, mugging at Mark, as the others chuckled at his antics.

"They actually sent us up some fresh produce on the resupply," Lewis mentioned. "But it's still been a long time."

"You guys had salad _without me_?" Mark laughed, pretending to be offended.

Lewis nodded, smiling. "They sent up apples, too."

A collective groan went up. That package of ten crisp green apples had been the biggest hit of the entire resupply.

"Those apples were _amazing_ ," Beth said, laughing at Mark's wide-eyed expression of mock-betrayal.

"I sliced mine up and spread peanut butter on them," Beck chimed in, grinning. "Delicious!"

"You bastard." Mark grinned at him.

"Peanut butter," shuddered Vogel. "Disgusting stuff. Is one thing I will _not_ miss."

"I didn't actually mean food, though." Mark said.

"You didn't?" Beth grinned. "Okay, then. I miss the beach."

"That's an easy one," Rick said. "My wife. My son."

Lewis and Vogel nodded, in unison.

"Family," they said.

Mark thought about that for a minute, chewing a bite of his chicken and rice.

* * *

It was still on his mind, a couple of hours later, as he was drifting off to sleep, idly stroking Beth's dark hair with one hand, holding her hand with the other, their fingers laced together.

Even though they'd only been together for a few months, this thing with Beth felt really solid. He'd never felt this way about anyone. Ever.

It felt fulfilling, and real. Without knowing precisely how and when, she had become _his_ family, somehow. She'd gotten under his skin. He'd fallen in love with her. And he was beginning to wonder how, exactly, that was going to work, when they were back on terra firma in a couple of months.

Would it work? Could it? Did she even want it to?

She seemed so comfortable with him, so into it, that his first instinct was to think that of course she'd want to be with him, once they were home. Even if it meant some upheaval, right? Some adjustments? He knew that he would cheerfully give _his_ life a major overhaul if it meant that he'd be with Beth.

But there was still a layer of doubt there, when he thought it over. Maybe this whole situation was just something she found convenient, like she'd said that first morning. Just a casual thing. A shipboard thing.

She'd never talked about the future with him. Not once. Never said that she loved him, or that she wanted anything more. Maybe that was the clue phone ringing, and he'd better pick it up.

What if she dumped him, post-haste, when their time on _Hermes_ was over?

She wouldn't even _have_ to dump him, actually, since they weren't even technically, officially together in the first place. Maybe he'd gotten way too invested in this thing.

Beth was a dozen years younger than he was, he reminded himself. Maybe younger girls weren't as interested in serious relationships? He remembered how casually she had suggested that he move his things over to her room instead of Vogel's.

Feel free to be my roommate, she'd said.

As he laid there, her head pillowed on his chest, listening to her breathing, deep and even, holding her close, there were a lot of things that he wasn't sure about. But he did know one thing for certain.

He didn't want to be her roommate.

* * *

Despite his intentions, he hadn't ever gotten around to writing that "guess what?" email to his parents. He'd meant to, sure, but the thing with Beth was difficult to define, and somehow, he'd found writing about it to anyone, even his parents, whom he was close to, just plain weird.

They hadn't heard about it. Or if they had, they hadn't mentioned it in any of their weekly emails.

It didn't seem to be public knowledge.

The quiet rumors of the potential Ares 3 romance had died down and been quickly overshadowed by the widely reported news of the reactor repair EVA accident and rescue.

Beck's ongoing recovery.

The handsome, injured, astronaut doctor had turned out to be too much for the fangirls back on Earth to overlook after all, apparently. Mark now received three times as many media requests for Beck as he did for himself.

And of course, there were all the accolades he'd received, along with Mark, for bravery and decisive action. Not much doubt that someone, somewhere, was dreaming up a medal ceremony for them, at the White House or somewhere.

Now, though, he was wishing that he had written to his parents about Beth, already. For one thing, his mom always gave good advice.

* * *

There was nobody in the Rec to eat lunch with, damn it, so he went off in search of someone who didn't look too busy to bother.

He quickly found himself a target.

"You know," he asked Rick, slumping down in a seat next to him. "All this time on _Hermes,_ and I still have no idea what the fuck it is that you do all day." He grinned at him.

"Uh-uh" Rick shook his head. "Can't tell you about all of that, man. Your little botanist pea-brain might as'splode." He'd affected his best Cuban accent.

"Yeeeeah." Mark laughed. "You're just worried that if we all knew how little work you actually do, piloting the ship _that steers itself_ , that you'd be first in line if we ran out of food."

Rick laughed, nervously, as Mark assembled his chicken fajita. He looked dubiously at a chunk of processed chicken, as though he weren't quite sure whether or not it was fit for human consumption.

"You have no idea, man. No idea."

Something in his voice made Mark wonder for a brief instant if Rick was being serious, but of course he had to be joking.

"So what _do_ you do all day?" He smirked at Rick. This back-and-forth repartee was one of the highlights of having Martinez for his best friend.

"Wank it all day to that hot poster of your girlfriend," he replied, chuckling.

"Oh my god," Mark laughed, almost dropping his sandwich. "Fuck you. Did Beth show you that email?"

"Of course she did. We all had a good laugh. That shit went viral, man."

Mark rolled his eyes.

"Well, good. Awesome. I'm glad everyone had a good laugh at the poor guy that was at serious risk of _dying._ Pouring my heart out, down there."

"I didn't show anyone the one that you wrote me," Rick said, serious now. "Just FYI."

"Ugh. Thanks," he replied, thinking back to that maudlin thing he'd written. _Tell my parents…_ good god, what the hell had he been thinking!

"Never so happy to delete an email in my life," Rick chuckled. "As when I deleted _that_ one, the first night you were back aboard."

Mark nodded gratefully, quiet for a moment while he ate.

Finally, he couldn't resist.

"That 'prepare your body' comment, though. Really, man?" Mark joked. "What the hell!"

Rick burst into uncontrolled laughter, bent over at the waist, slapping his desk.

"Oh man, I got you guys _so good,_ " he choked, still laughing. "You should have _seen_ her face."

Mark smiled, imagining it.

"Pissed?"

"She's got a temper, that one," he chuckled.

"Yeah." Mark rolled his eyes. "I'm aware," he muttered dryly, thinking back to that day in the lab when she'd come storming in to call him an idiot, and then…

"Ha. I bet you are."

"Seriously though, did you… did you already know? That she… that I…" he trailed off, kind of sorry that he'd brought it up.

Rick was quiet for a moment, as though he were trying to decide how much to say.

"Well." He looked away, in an uncharacteristic way. "I guess… it was more of a… theory I had. I was just kind of testing it out, I guess. You two reminded me of…" he looked at Mark, ruefully. "It kind of took me back to like, high school or something, when you've got these two idiots that like each other, but maybe they need some sort of catalyst, before they can actually, you know… do anything about it."

Mark thought about that for a moment.

"And anyway," he continued, his usual joker's facade slipping effortlessly back into place, "we all sure as hell knew that it wasn't Beck that she wanted. You know, after she had to give him the big shut-down talk."

"I, um…" he could laugh about it now, he supposed, but it sure hadn't been funny a couple of months ago, "I might have been inadvertently responsible for that," he admitted, sheepishly.

"Responsible, how do you-" Rick started laughing again. "Oh no. No, no, no. You and your emails from Mars. It's the gift that keeps on giving, man. Tell me you didn't." He looked at Mark, expectantly.

"Yep. I did."

"Oh, no, man. Shit. Why in the fuck would you have-"

"Because I wanted her to be happy. I didn't think I had a chance in hell with a girl like that, in the first place. And I knew Chris was crazy about her. For all I knew, she felt the same way."

"High school." Rick said, finally. "It's like fucking high school in space, over here."

"Yes, I believe that it's been established that I was an idiot."

"Well, it looks like it's working out okay for you, even so," Rick grinned. "Million Mile High Club, inaugural members!"

"Shut it," Mark chuckled. "I just worry, though…" he paused, not sure if this was something that he wanted to discuss.

Rick was serious again, now.

"What's up?"

"I guess I'm just worried about what's going to happen when we get home," he said, hoping that Rick wouldn't make fun of him.

"Ah," he said, sagely. "Don't know if she'll still be into it, once her options expand?"

"Well, yeah. I guess. And I just don't know how it would work. I'm from Chicago; she's a California girl, I graduated college when she was in elementary school. I don't even know what I'm going to be doing, post-NASA. I don't know where she fits into my plans. I don't know if I fit into hers. If she even wants it."

"Wow." Rick replied. His face was still serious, but Mark was bracing himself, just in case. "Well, this settles it."

"Settles what?"

"You're still an idiot, Watney. Have you talked with her about any of this?"

Mark hesitated.

"See?" he continued. "Idiot. Talk to her."

"It's just…" he trailed off. He _did_ feel like an idiot, now. "It's just not _like_ that, with me and Beth, we don't-"

"You don't _talk_? What the fuck is it that you _do_?" he grinned, echoing Mark's earlier question. He smirked at him, for good measure. "Man. I don't think I want to hear about this."

"It's more that we haven't really-"

"No wait, I changed my mind. You're my only direct source about how sex in point-four G is. Even if it's only nerd action, I guess beggars can't be choosers-"

"Fuck you," he said, cutting him off, as they both laughed.

"Sorry," he shook his head, smirking at Mark. "So, what? You're too busy, getting busy, to talk? Tell me again, what the problem is, here?"

"Oh my god," he shook his head. "Never fucking mind," he laughed.

"Okay, okay, sorry. So what you're saying, basically, is that _Johanssen_ is too busy, wanting to get busy, but _you_ want to slow down, talk about your feelings? God, that must be rough. I feel for you, man."

Mark rolled his eyes.

Rick was quiet for awhile. Finally, he continued, "Seriously, though. Talk to her."


	13. Chapter 13

It was the brightest thing in the sky now, Beth couldn't help noticing, as she finished her daily treadmill time. Only a little over a month remained before Hermes would, hopefully, fall back into Earth's orbit, dock with _Orion_ , and then they'd be on their way back to Earth. None of them likely to ever fly again. Not with NASA, anyway.

Home. It seemed like such an arcane concept now. _Hermes_ felt like home now. Her small bunkroom, off the main corridor. That was home.

No, that wasn't quite right, was it?

She ran a towel across her damp face, as she considered, looking at the blue planet thoughtfully.

Back when she'd been selected for Ares 3, as soon as she'd seen her name on that list; she hadn't thought twice. She'd put her stuff in storage, gotten out of her lease. Hardly even missed the place, really. She'd gone straight into the residential training facility at Kennedy. She supposed her logical first stop, when NASA released her, would be to stay with her parents for awhile. They'd invited her to, expected her to.

She'd tried to avoid dwelling on that plan, really, because… why? She just didn't like the sound of it. Was it because Watney had never said anything to imply that they'd still be together once the mission was over?

Nowhere sounded like a good place to be, if Mark wasn't going to be there, too.

There it was. Maybe… Maybe it wasn't too late. God, why hadn't she thought about this, sooner?

They still had a month. There was still time, maybe they could still make plans.

The problem was that they really didn't _talk_ that much, she smiled and blushed a little at the thought.

Gut instinct told her that Mark was crazy for her. He was the perfect boyfriend, except for the minor matter of her being too embarrassed and shy to admit that that's what she wanted him to be. And he acted like one, anyway, so she'd tried not to get too hung up on the formalities. She didn't want to scare him off, after all. But pretty soon, this part of their lives would be over.

It was time to make some plans, she thought.

Mark had a lot of fine qualities. He was smart, funny, thoughtful. Forever doing nice things for her. And even nicer things _to_ her. But when they were alone… they joked around, sure. Mostly, though, they kept it light, or they didn't talk at all.

She dropped to the mat in the middle of the gym's floor to start her cooldown, stretches mostly, and some relaxation breathing. Eyes closed, she reached for her arch of her right foot, pulling gently on it, pulling her leg and back muscles taut. She was broken out of her reverie with a start as someone's shadow fell across her face.

"There you are," Mark grinned down at her. She smiled back at him, watching as his face shifted, relaxed, as it always did when they were alone together. Admiring, now. Like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He had wonderful eyes, expressive and kind, with laugh lines that bespoke his sense of humor. They were crinkling at her now, as he watched her crane her neck awkwardly, to look up at him.

"Hey," she replied, "I'm nearly done in here. What's up?"

"Nothing much. Feel free to carry on, there." He glanced at her, appreciatively, mid stretch. She rolled her eyes at him. "It's a nice view," he grinned.

She glanced out the nearby window, at the blue planet, nodding towards it. "It _is_ a nice view."

He followed her gaze, and nodded, thoughtfully.

"My exercise schedule block starts in a few minutes," he said, conversationally, as he started to fiddle with the settings on the treadmill, "what are your plans?"

"My plans?" she repeated, absently, still looking ahead towards planet Earth. Cool and blue, and drifting ever closer to them. "You mean…" she trailed off. "Oh, you mean the next block. Housekeeping duties." She grimaced. "Beth Johanssen, space janitor." They all took turns with cleanup duties, Commander Lewis included.

He laughed. "I'll have some business cards printed up for you." He handed her water bottle to her, and she had a sip from it, as she switched positions, stretching to her left side, this time.

"You never know," she chuckled, self-deprecatingly, "It's not like I've got anything better lined up, once we land."

He looked at her, curiously. "Really?"

"Oh, well," she muttered, feeling every muscle in her upper leg as she continued to pull against them. "Nothing set in stone, you know? I've gotten a few offers. I'm sure you know what I mean. It's just that I don't think I'll be doing _this,_ " she gestured to the white walls of _Hermes,_ and the field of stars, visible outside, "ever again."

"Me neither," he replied, chuckling.

Hesitantly, glancing down so that her face wouldn't be visible, she asked him, "What about you? What's next?"

"Exercise block," he replied, gravely. She finally glanced up to see that he was joking. "Not sure. I've got some possibilities, I guess, but I don't even have anywhere to live," he grinned at her. "It's going to be weird, huh?"

She nodded. She turned onto her side, reaching straight out. She took a deep breath, and steeled herself. She'd never been skydiving before, but she imagined it had to be a pretty similar feeling. She swallowed.

Here goes nothing, she thought, ruefully.

"Maybe we could find somewhere…" she started hesitantly.

He had snapped to full attention now.

"Together, you mean?" his face looked hopeful, and relieved, and when she nodded, he burst out into a boyish grin, holding a hand out to her. He pulled her onto her feet, and swept her into a hug, in one quick motion.

He held her for a long time, arms so tight around her, her feet dangling an inch or two off of the floor, that she wasn't sure just then where she stopped and he began. Both their hearts were racing. He set her gently back down, and crushed her back into another hug, kissing the top of her head.

Finally, she leaned up and kissed him, quickly, as she pulled away. "I'm all sweaty. Need to go get my shower and get cleaned up." Clearly not deterred by a little sweatiness, he pulled her back for one last hug. She kissed him again, more lingeringly.

He stepped up onto the treadmill, still grinning like an idiot, as she gathered up her towel and water bottle. "You need to get cleaned up, so you can go clean up? That makes sense." He nodded, amused, and then shook his head, fondly, at her.

"Yeah, yeah." She smirked at him.

He was just breaking into a jog, still grinning at her.

"Don't get used to it, Watney," she continued. "Just 'cause I'm on cleanup patrol today, doesn't mean I'll be cleaning up after _you_ , down there." She gestured to Earth again.

Mark pantomimed using a broom and dustpan while jogging, in wild double-time, as she laughed at his antics, walking away.

"You got it, Sunshine," he called after her.

* * *

"Hey, Mark?"

He and Beth were in bed together, later that evening, after dinner. It was personal time, and they'd spent the last hour of it following the schedule, as they liked to joke, to the best of their abilities. Getting as personal as possible.

It was, by far, his favorite time of the mission day.

"Hmm?" He tucked an arm around her waist, as she cuddled against him, glancing up at him through long eyelashes. She was, without doubt, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Have you told anyone, back home, about us?"

She had said it flirtatiously, but it took him by surprise.

He blurted out, "No, but I've been meaning to?" as she giggled at his reaction.

"Was that a question?" she teased.

"Yes. No." He chuckled, smoothing her hair. "Take it whichever way you'd like."

"Because I haven't actually told _my_ family about you yet, either," she continued. "I don't know why, exactly. I guess, maybe," she glanced up at him, with an apologetic smile, "it seemed like an invasion of your privacy, or something."

"Feel free," he quipped, nibbling on her ear, "to invade my privacy any time you like."

She groaned at the bad joke, and wiggled around until she was face to face with him.

"Where do you want to live, anyway? Houston?" He made a mock-horrified face. "Oh, thank god," she laughed.

"Glad we're on the same page, there. Too much humidity."

"Winters in Chicago might be a little much for me," she admitted, shyly, hoping that he didn't have his heart set on the Windy City.

"Duly noted," he chuckled. "Actually, one of the better offers I've gotten would be working at NASA headquarters."

"D.C.," she mused. "Sounds okay," she grinned at him. "I've got some possibilities there at HQ, too, and there's always federal contracting."

He nodded, feeling like he wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming.

She wanted to move in together?

He'd hardly let himself hope that she was serious about this, about him. Now, as he started to imagine an apartment together, coming home to her every night…

It sounded pretty fucking amazing.


	14. Chapter 14

**Mission Day 988**

 **December 22, 2037**

"Hey, I think I can see my house from here," Mark joked, as he and Vogel waited for instructions, during their final EVA to make sure that the Vehicular Airlock was ready for visitors.

"That is Australia," noted Vogel, dryly.

"Exactly." As far away from Idaho as possible. Also, Australia had the distinct benefit of not being Houston.

 _Orion_ had already launched, unmanned, from Cape Canaveral earlier that day; now it was just a matter of hours before the descent vehicle caught up with them in Low Earth Orbit.

Mark kind of wished he _could_ go hide out in Western Australia for awhile. He knew good and well that the next few weeks, once he set foot on terra firma, his time would be monopolized by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. The NSBRI had been conducting several studies on the crew members, but especially on him. And by several, of course, he meant hundreds. He'd be stuck in research hell for weeks, no doubt. And Hell had a name. Houston, Texas.

His friend and crewmate, Dr. Beck had also been the focus of several hastily conceived research studies, having survived an episode of decompression in space. He'd probably be standing shoulder to shoulder with the researchers, though, having a blast.

Beck had recovered from his ordeal fairly quickly, though the ground crew was still worried enough about his health that they had bumped him from today's EVA. He had mostly returned to his normal duties, but the joints in his left hand tended to be stiff, like he had developed a bad overnight case of arthritis.

Beck's EVA suit wasn't in the best condition, these days, anyway. They'd patched it back together as best they could, but it had taken the brunt of a vapor explosion, head-on; it had the undisputed honor of being the ugliest EVA suit on _Hermes_ , and that was saying something, with Mark's ragged-out suit as competition.

The VAL wasn't looking too hot, either, after the rest of the crew had built and detonated a _motherfucking bomb_ , to intentionally cause explosive decompression. Mark shook his head, ruefully. He still had a hard time believing that they'd really done that for him. He'd always loved his crewmates, but that day had really brought it home; they would willingly do some crazy, dangerous shit for one another. Even Beck, who hadn't been very happy with him, at the time. Mark grinned.

It had been seven months since _that_ crazy rollercoaster ride of a day.

During that time, of course, _Hermes_ had had no real need of a working VAL.

They'd done some testing on it, of course. Plenty of simulations. But short of having an actual vehicle show up to dock with it, it wasn't really possible to know for certain that it would work like it was supposed to.

There were a few potential problems (okay, a metric fuckload of potential problems) that might arise if the VAL could not be brought back into service in a few hours, though.

It wasn't as though the crew could do an EVA, en masse, to hop into _Orion_ to head home. _Orion_ didn't have its own airlock. Barring very unusual situations, _Orion_ would launch from the Cape, take a day or so to catch up with _Hermes,_ dock with the VAL, and voila! Homeward bound.

It was theoretically possible for _Orion_ to dock with one of the other airlocks on _Hermes_ , even if they weren't purpose-made for that task. It would make retrieving all of the vacuum-stored samples a big pain in the ass, for one thing, since they were all stored on the opposite end of the ship and couldn't be brought into _Hermes_. Instead, someone would have to shlep them all over to the airlock, one load at a time, and gods forbid that any freeze-dried poop or dead lab mice accidentally go floating off into orbit decay.

Some poor fucker in some university lab would lose his funding.

And since there were several hundred such sample containers, that would need to be manually transferred to _Orion_ , Mark was really hoping that the old VAL could manage things as planned. He'd really rather not be up here until New Years.

Over the next couple of years, NASA and the ESA would be sending up a couple dozen supply and maintenance missions to _Hermes,_ preparing it for the next Ares mission. Hopefully, with far less drama, this time. _Hermes_ functioned as another (really large) space station during that time, with _Orion_ capsules coming and going, frequently. Mark had been aboard _Hermes_ himself, in that capacity, a couple of times, before being selected for Ares III. Most of the crew had, actually.

But the odds were pretty good that none of them ever would, again.

* * *

Martinez gazed intently at the telemetry feed, as _Orion_ approached the VAL. It looked like it was moving pretty slowly, relatively speaking, though of course it was actually travelling at nearly 28,000 kilometers per hour, just like _Hermes_.

Johanssen updated them occasionally with _Orion_ 's distance and relative velocity, as it slowly made its way towards the VAL.

"Visual on _Orion_ ," reported Mark gleefully from the VAL, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

Martinez chuckled. "Christmas is coming early this year," he laughed. "At least, Watney seems to think so."

"2.1 meters per second," Johanssen called out. "Twenty seconds."

"Initiating auto capture," Martinez said.

Let's hope this works, Mark thought, holding his breath, as _Orion_ cruised straight towards him.

CRUNCH.

 _Hermes_ jolted against the sudden force.

It slammed into the dock, quite a bit faster than Mark would have liked; he watched the docking mechanism struggle to catch it. The angle seemed to have been a little off, but the auto capture won out, clamping on to _Orion_ and dragging it into place to lock it down.

* * *

Mark had just unfastened the locking mechanism on his box of personal effects that would be coming aboard _Orion_ with him, when the pocket door slid open. Beth appeared, floating, in the doorway, smiling at him.

"Got your suitcase all packed?" she teased. "Got your toothbrush, and some clean undies?"

Mark laughed. "Darn, I knew I was forgetting something. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wear yours."

Beth giggled at the mental image.

She was quiet for a few minutes, as she watched him remove the last of the personal items that had made it _their_ bunk. He grinned at her, as he rolled up his maroon sweatshirt, with its silver phoenix insignia, and tucked it inside the kit.

"Mark?"

"Yeah?"

She reached out and propelled herself over to him, putting her arms around his neck, hugging him tight.

He held her close for a long time, not sure if she was sad to be leaving, or happy to be going home. Or somewhere in between.

Maybe it was just the uncertainty of moving on. Not knowing where the road would take them, from here.

"Hey," he whispered into her hair. "We'll be okay. We'll be together."

She clung to him tighter, at the words. She nodded, against his shoulder, and then tilted her face up to his, for a kiss.

"I love you," he said, quietly, kissing her.

She floated back from him a few inches, looking up at him, obviously surprised to hear such a serious avowal of love from him.

"Me too," she stammered. "I mean, I love you too."

"I just wanted to tell you that, while we were still up here," he smiled at her.

"It's been a fun ride, eh?" She gestured to the tiny bunk room, her eyes lingering on the narrow bed.

"You could say that." He grinned, thinking of what an unexpected journey it had all been. Not much doubt in his mind that the trip home had been the best part, and the reason why was right here in his arms.

"You know…" her voice trailed off, suggestively.

"Hmm?"

"We've still got a few minutes until it's time to go," she smirked at him, fluttering her long eyelashes. "And we've never had a chance to mess around in Zero-G."

By the time she'd finished saying it, Mark had already pulled his shirt over his head, flinging it, not caring where it went, as it floated away. He reached out to pull Beth roughly back against him, locking his arms around her.

"I _guess_ I'm willing," he deadpanned. "Just for scientific research purposes, you understand."

"Yeah, yeah," she laughed. "You're such a clown, you know that, right?"

"Someone told me that," he muttered, kissing her, "once." He kissed her again, more aggressively. "Now who _was_ it?" he pretended to think, as she nipped at his bottom lip.

"Shut it, Watney, and find something to brace yourself against," she growled at him.

* * *

"That should do it," Martinez reported, as Lewis did the honor of opening the hatch to _Orion_.

"Okay. Start loading it up," she told Beck, with a rare smile.

The interior of the descent vehicle was plain and white, except for the two rows of three seats each. There small storage bin for their personal items kits, but all the rest was a jumble of black crash webbing. It would be a surprisingly bumpy ride home.

Lewis and Vogel were first to be strapped in. Helping his crewmates to get safely strapped in for the trip home was one of Beck's duties, and he took it seriously. A poor fitting on his part would mean a battered and bruised crewmate at landing. It was also some of the last scheduled, blocked-out duties for _any_ of the crew members; only Martinez and Lewis would be working on the trip down, and only sporadically. The rest of the crew were officially finished with their Ares III mission duties when the hatch closed between themselves and _Hermes._

And when they hit the ground, in the desert sands of West Texas, it would be someone else's job to unstrap them, to help them into the helicopter that would take them on to Houston.

Beck couldn't keep a smile off his face as he pulled the crash webbing around Vogel's legs. Nobody was more grateful to be going home than he was.

* * *

Vogel wore a big smile, too. Before the day was out, he'd be holding his wife. His son and daughter. He'd never thought it possible that he'd be away from for so long.

When he'd been selected for Ares III; winning the only berth allotted to the European Space Agency, it had felt as though he was the luckiest man on the planet. And then, leaving Watney behind on Mars, believing that he was dead; it had seemed like a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from.

It had been an epic adventure, in every sense of the word. And now their improbable journey together was almost over.

After a brief stay at the NSBRI, he would be on a flight back to Bremen, where he'd wait out the rest of his reacclimation in the hands of the ESA, instead, with his family nearby.

He glanced through the window, down at the blue planet below.

* * *

"Too tight?" Beck asked, as he cinched the closure across her lower legs.

She shook her head. Tight was good. Tight was safe. Maybe it was weird, but Melissa had always rather liked confined spaces.

Just one of those sensory things, she figured. But it had come in handy for her military career, and then again in the space program.

She supposed this was the apex of her professional career, returning from a challenging mission, with her entire crew, safe and sound. The guilt she'd felt at Mark's death had almost consumed her, when he turned out to be alive, instead.

Beck's accident, during the reactor repair; he'd come up with his own rescue plan, and he and Watney had managed to work together to make it happen, despite their fractured friendship. She couldn't have been prouder of them. They had been an exemplary crew, all around.

It made her sad to think that her time together with them as a team was all but over, now, but despite everything that had been thrown their way, all six of them were headed home. All of them.

Mission accomplished.

She was fully strapped in, now. Ready for action. The only thing missing, she thought, was a little Sister Sledge. She winked at Martinez, who activated her playlist with a few taps to the control screen.

* * *

Trust Commander Lewis, Beth thought wryly, to deem "We Are Family" as the perfect song to begin their descent.

"And we are... away," announced Martinez, cheerfully, as the spring-loaded mechanism in the VAL pushed _Orion_ away, slowly away, in the opposite direction.

 _Hermes_ stretched out in front of them, and once again, Beth marveled at the sheer size and scope of it. It was, to her eyes, a beautiful ship; a starbound artwork, all graceful lines and reflective coatings, sparkling as the Eastern sunrise came around Earth's edge.

It was all so damned beautiful, a once in a lifetime view; she wanted to share it with someone. She looked to her right. Mark was already seeing it, his eyes wide and appreciative of this new point of view.

He glanced over at her, and grinned. He made to move his hand over to hold hers, probably knowing full well that the crash webbing wouldn't allow them to get that close. He just wanted to show her that he _did_ want to.

But to her surprise, his left arm was actually strapped in just loosely enough that he could reach halfway across the gap to the next seat.

So was her right arm, when she tried it. Their fingers laced together, as they grinned at one another, and then she realized that Chris must have done it that way on purpose.

She turned to her left and thanked him, silently, with a smile and a thumbs up.

Beck just nodded, and laughed at them.

What a family, she thought. Maybe Lewis and her goofy disco music had a good point.


	15. Chapter 15

Epilogue

 **May 22, 2038**

 **Rock Creek Park**

Mark and Beth sat on a stone bench, overlooking the rushing water, as they took a breather from their Saturday morning jog.

It was a quiet part of the trail. Very green. There had been a lot of rain this spring, and Beth remembered reading somewhere that green was relaxing on the eyes. She had to agree. Even after nearly half a year of being back, she never got tired of looking at green. Mark didn't seem to, either.

She took a sip of her water, sitting contemplatively, just enjoying the fresh air.

Mark was still not much of a talker, with the exception of when he was being a smartass, but that was just Mark, and she didn't mind it. Maybe that was a part of why they got on so well together; as long as they knew where they stood with one another, they didn't feel much need to hash things out. They were good.

On the bench next to her, Mark shifted and was halfway standing, when a voice from behind them startled them both.

"Hey! I know them!" It was a young boy, followed by his somewhat embarrassed mother, who was pushing a jogging stroller and clutching the leash of a yellow lab.

"Hi," Mark greeted the dog, ignoring the boy, as he ruffled the dog's ears.

"You're Mark Watney!"

"Sweetheart, don't bother people like that!" the mother scolded him, and added, to Mark and Beth, "Sorry about him."

"It's okay," Mark shrugged.

"You went to Mars!" the boy said, stating the obvious, hero worship written all over his face,

"Sure did. _She_ went twice," Mark looked at Beth, grinning.

"I know! That was so awesome!"

"Okay, sweetie, we should go. It was nice to meet you both," the mother said, apologetically, tugging at the dog's leash.

Beth couldn't help herself from smirking a little bit at the boy's parting question.

"Mr. Watney? Would you ever want go back to Mars again?" he asked. "I mean, if there was another mission and they wanted you to go, would you?"

"You out of your fucking mind, kid?"

"Mark!" Beth laughed, shaking her head in apology at the mother, and rolling her eyes at Mark. "Sorry! What he was _trying_ to say was," she paused, as Mark snorted with laughter, "was that we have both had enough space travel for our lifetimes. So thanks, but no thanks."

The little boy, still grinning, waved bye at them, as the mom dragged him away and down the trail.

Beth was still giggling a few minutes later when Mark got to his feet and stretched.

"That little guy was pretty cute," he said. "Maybe we should get ourselves one of those, sometime."

Beth was struck speechless.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Well," Mark paused, "yeah. Why not?"

"You want to have _kids_? Really?" Her eyes were wide, her voice incredulous. "I mean…" she trailed off. "That's…"

"Kids? Who said anything about kids?" Mark laughed at her. "I was just talking about the dog."

* * *

 _The End._


End file.
